In preparation for Chicago Pride...

Sunday is Chicago's annual Pride Parade, and invariably, the Westboro Baptist Church will be out in full force, once again, to blame the fantastic members of the Chicago Pride community for the deaths of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for basically all of the ills in the world, since "God hates fags."


Really, guys?  I have a sneaking suspicion that you are incorrect.  Citations:


Matthew 6:6 "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."


2 Corinthians 12:20 "For I am afraid that when I come I may not find you as I want you to be, and you may not find me as you want me to be. I fear that there may be quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, gossip, arrogance and disorder."


1 John 4:20 "If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen."


Leviticus 19:17 "You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him."


John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."


HEY GUESS WHAT?


I checked out your book!


Looks like GOD HATES YOU!!!!!!!

It's finally here!

The reason I haven't been blogging much has finally arrived on Amazon.com!

SKYN by Katrina Rue is now available for purchase!

I can't believe I've waited this long to take my destiny into my own hands, but now that today is finally here, I am so excited!

Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/SKYN-Part-One-ebook/dp/B008CVY2MQ/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1340207773&sr=8-2&keywords=katrina+rue

First World Problems

I stand before you, my most vulnerable moment

Ready to

Hope in purification

A baptism anew.

Fire at the left, ice at the right

I pray for harmony.

I beg for a soft embrace,

not a sizzling lash

not a frosty slap.

I stand before you

drowning cutting falling scalding

Anything is possible. I wait.

To the center, you yield nothing

barely warming

I veer slightly left creeping to the flame.

Slowly you unfold and welcome me

soothing cleansing relaxing

and then you turn away.

Abandon me not!

I pull towards the left

You lash out.

My skin rises pink at your cruel strike.

In frustration,

I

turn

off

my

shower.

Copyright Katrina Rue, 2012. All rights reserved.

Back once again!

Hey! So, again, I've been ridiculously busy. Here's what's been on the agenda:

• Work. Gotta make the moneys to keep the electric paid to keep the computer on for more writing!
• My own YouTube Channel to unleash the occasional comic part of me (WARNING: The link is not representative of, well, any real person ever, I would hope. The character I portray is a caricature and a parody)
• And writing my latest novel!

This novel is something I'm very proud of... I'm absolutely exhausted of the whole rider-and-mount subgenre of fantasy these days. The heroes are always innocent youths that through their bond with their (dragon? unicorn? talking ficus?), mature and save the world. Bel Phthlegor is definitely not your mama's fantasy hero, in as many ways as you can think of. Throw in subversion of a couple fairytales here and there, add in the perversion of a few classic fantasy races, and a couple twists along the way that I hope nobody will see coming, and we've got ourselves a winner!

Work, work, work!

I have been off for the past week, and I have been throwing myself at writing my new novel. I usually try to hit a thousand words a day, but this week, I've been topping out at two thousand. In a week, I've doubled my word count! My goal is 80,000, and today I hit 20,000. Go me!

This time, I decided to converge my processes from the first four novels. My first two novels, I didn't outline, and my second two, I outlined perhaps too much. This time, I just have a very, very loose outline, that hits on the major plot points.

Also, this time, writing is going a little easier, perhaps due to the fact that I have a wealth of real life experience to draw from. My protagonist works in the mall, and he encounters a lot of customers. Not all of them are pleasant, and some of them are downright special. So, I've had a lot of tiny anecdotes to weave into my storytelling. I'm sure, at press time, nobody is going to believe that I actually experienced these things, but...

There's only one thing I've been worrying about, and that is to impugn the retail industry or the profession. I do not hate retail. I actually had a very good time in retail, and I find it to be a much better use of my talents than, say, at a desk job. I'm not the type that can just sit and stare at the same thing all day long. I need to be up and about, moving around, with different things to do and different people to meet, and for me, retail was the perfect career choice. Besides writing, of course. Someday I hope to be able to pursue my true passion. But, until then, I don't hate the fact that I work in a store.

Then again, even if I don't manage to overcome that, and end up publishing a screed against retail when I intended to write an urban fantasy novel, so what? Upton Sinclair's The Jungle isn't remembered as the Communist manifesto it was supposed to be, but as a polemic indicting the meat packing industry of the time. Not to say that I am possibly the next Upton Sinclair, of course. But, a girl can dream.

Azrael's Tale: New Project!

Word Count: 4,000/projected 75,000 (Projected End Date: March 31)

Things To Do

- Editing (Projected End Date: April 30)
- Formatting (Takes fifteen minutes; can do post-edit)
- Title Page (Same day as formatting)
- Dedication (Should get on this)
- Copyright Page (Probably only five minutes, right?)
- Query Package
- Query Top Ten Agents (Have only five agents I would gleefully kill to work with, find five more)

Bored!

Because I'm not really feeling like "writing" these days, I've decided to start blogging short humor articles. I'm still working on novels, no worries, but I'm taking a break from thinking on them.

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.