Goodreads!

Yes, I know the book was "real" before, but now it has its own goodreads page! Now it's more real. Now it exists in a database other than my own hard drive and it's clickable.

It's just a cool, cool moment. :-D

"Your" Book vs. Your Book

That title confusing enough for you? Good, now let me explain.

I've gotten a few questions since my book deal notice went up, and most are simple, but this is a subject I'd rather do a full post on. It concerns things like titles and book covers that may or may not (<-- most likely) be under the author's control.

When you start writing a book, it's a solitary and often insular activity. The characters live inside a world you create (at least with fantasy or sci-fi), that - up to the point you get it on paper - only exists in your own mind. No one else can see what you see and no one else can know what you know. You have complete control.

Then you send your book out into the world.

Here's where things get tricky. The universe you've created? It still only exists inside your head. No matter how well you've described it, every set of new eyes that takes in your words is going to see something slightly different as your words are filtered through the reader's experiences. Just think how many times you've seen a novel-turned-film and thought the actor looked nothing like the picture in your head.

It happens. Intent isn't always synonymous with result, and while something may be completely obvious to you, you can't assume, as a writer, that what comes through on the page is what you meant to convey. And the same holds true for the person who designs your cover.

I can't tell you how many temper tantrums I've seen on various sites when authors discover that they can't control what goes on the cover of their book when it comes to title or cover art. They create mock covers (similar to what I've shown you here before), only with the expectation that those covers will be the final product, then they stamp their feet and scream that it's their book so they should get to decide what's on the front.

But, here's the secret: That book you wrote? It's not only yours anymore. If you sell it to a commercial publisher, then it's theirs, too. They have entire departments dedicated to marketing; they have experience in the market itself; they know what titles are being used for upcoming novels and they know that if yours sounds too similar it can hurt sales; they know how to craft a cover that will attract attention so a potential reader picks up the book and reads the back or skims the first pages. Most likely, you don't. And while your main focus may be to create a "perfect" image that conveys all the little nuances of your plot, the designer also has to focus on selling books, and that means a cover attractive to the market.

If it were up to me, I know exactly what I'd put on a book cover. It would be a perspective shot of my MC running toward the reader with her hand stretched out and her fingers dissolving to wind-blown particles of dust. The title would be Arclight, and the tagline would read : "There is the Light. There is the Dark. And no one survives the Fade."

But, at the same time, I'm excited to see how someone else interprets the book. What do they think it should be called? How do they see it? Because in the end, I didn't write it for only myself; I wrote a book because I wanted to share the story with others.

It's still your book, full of your words and characters and effort. You're a writer, so do your best with the parts you can control and don't sweat letting people who know more about design handle the parts that are their responsibility.

What Would You Like To Know?

I've never done an open question thread before, but I've seen others do them, and I'm curious if anyone reading this blog has any questions. I can't promise I'll be able to answer everything, but I can at least pretend I know what I'm talking about. ;)

So... what do you want to know?

I can haz book deal?

I CAN! I CAN!

Some of you may have seen this over the weekend, as it ran early in Publisher's Weekly, but I wanted to wait until I had the Publisher's Marketplace announcement to go with it before I put it on the blog:

		July 22, 2011
		Children's: Young Adult		Josin L. McQuein's debut ARCLIGHT, a science fiction/dystiopian thriller, where a parasitic race is driving humanity to the point of extinction, and no one who leaves the last safe enclave ever returns until one teenage girl, a stranger, stumbles out of the Dark, to Martha Mihalick at Greenwillow, in a two-book deal, in a major deal, by Suzie Townsend at FinePrint Literary Management (NA).

And now... HAPPY DANCE!

H is for...

H is for Heroes -- those goodest of good guys (we've established I make my own words on this blog, yes? Good, then move along.) Hero Goodguy is the one who gets the glory, the one who has the exciting life, the one everyone wants to kill (at least if you write fantasy). He should be good, but not too good. Dirty him up, give a dark secret (toe fungus counts, in case you're wondering), and above all else, give him a weakness or two that can actually hinder him.

H is for Heroines -- your own brand or otherwise... oh wait, that's the other kind of heroin (I'll get to homophones in a minute). Heroines should be as dimensional as their male counterparts. They should have strengths and weakness and not be used as a convenient plot device (any more than a male character should be used as a plot device for the female one) If she starts going MarySue on you, you may need to kill her (or find a priest who deals with such things).

H is for Homophones --Dear, deer, know, no, there, their, two, too, to... and on and on (anon!). Did you really mean to say what you said? Are you sure?

H is for High Concept -- Here

H is for Hard -- the thing that writing is, but no one bothers to tell you when you're a starry-eyed youngster who thinks it's all book tours and signings or movie deals and getting your names on those things on shelves with pages in them.

H is for Happy, Hope, Hate, and History --

You will be happy when you finish your book, and each subsequent version of it. You will have hope that said book will net you an agent and a publishing deal, and then make readers smile. There will be times you will hate your book, or the process that goes into finishing it. (You may even hate your dog for jymping up onto your keyboard and plopping her fat belly down so that she presses the delete key and leaves you with 376 fewer pages than you had before her nap.) But hang in there, some day, when your book is sitting all shiny on a shelf or taking up memory in someone's e-reader, that roller coaster will be history. (Though, on the subject of history, if you're writing historical fiction, then please know what you're talking about. If you don't, someone will notice; I promise.)

Next time: I is for Idea, Ingenuity, and Ick-factors...

Flash Fiction Challenge

It's another Friday, so over on Chuck Wendig's blog there's another flash-fic challenge. I haven't tried one of these in a while, and I found the prompt interesting, so here goes my attempt at a noir/steampunk mash-up:

The dock-side markets used to smell of rotted fish no one had bothered to buy earlier in the day. They'd lump it all up in the back and let the birds take it or cut it for bait to make the night's haul. Maybe it still smells that way... it's not like I'd know the difference. Nah, my whole world carries the scent of copper and machine oil with a chaser of whatever sludge they use to tint the gaslines to let you know when there's a leak.

Maybe it was the morphine they pumped into me for the sake of comfort, or maybe I was the sucker born at the right minute, but a metal body to replace failing flesh sounded good at the time. And I guess in the long run it's better than taking the usual road for a guy who lost one fight too many, but how great can my life be when I spend my nights longing for the stink of a rotted haddock?

I turn down Water Street, into what the locals call the Chapels, but there's no church about them. Tiny shacks and pitched up tents around buildings that would fall without poles and posts to hold them up, and each one of them lit with a red lantern to show business is in session. Queen over the place, the Abbess stands outside the main hub, one hand clutching her shawl round her shoulders and the other wound into the shirt of some ponce who tried to run out without payin' his fee.

From the sound of it, he didn't like the look of his dolly once he got her up close... wasn't put off enough to leave elsewhere, mind, just enough not to pay.

"I want a nightmare, I can stay home with my own," he says. "Don't gotta pay there, won't make me do different here." He's trying to pull up his trousers as he goes, but the suspenders are tangled in his feet. "Call a cop if you want to make a deal of it. A'int no blue bottle gonna step into the wasp's nest on account of any of you hags. Chapel's no man's land, and this man's leaving."

He's not the first to call the Abbess a hag, and it's true - she's a fair bit of nightmare, all bones and scabby skin, barely any hair left on her head. But she takes care of her girls, and even if I still had heart to claim there'd be no pity in it for the berk still caught fast in her fingers.

"Don't need no blues," she says, smiling into the shadows where I stand across the street. I don't know how she knows where I am, but her eyes find mine no matter the distance between us. "We got one better."

The Abbess lets go, and the deadbeat tries to run, not realizing that the spider only lets go of the fly if it's sure the fly's not going anywhere.

And that's my cue.

There's a whoosh and whine as the pistons that pump my muscles respond a little slower than my own legs used to, but once they're going they're more than fast enough to make up for the gap. I hear the ground below my feet but don't feel it, hear the iron fingers riveted onto my hands cut the air with a whistle, but there's sense of cool on my skin. I don't have skin, not anymore.

I catch the man up as he runs, lifting him off the ground with one hand to hang by his collar, and he begins to choke from the pressure. I give him a little shake to loosen my grip and make it easier, but instead of curses or blubbering or anything else, I get a tiny snap before he goes rag-doll limp. It wasn't intentional, but I'm still not used to the strength.

"Not 'ow I'd've settled up, but done's done," the Abbess says. She reaches into his pocket for her girl's due, and takes the rest of his money along with it. "No sense lettin' it waste. Once you dump 'im someone's gonna lift it, so it might as well be me, eh?" She actually laughs, showing off surprisingly straight teeth. Then she dips back into the man's coat for his gold pocket watch. "Don' guess 'e'll be needin' to know the time where 'e's gone, either."

She hands the watch off to the red-faced dolly who'd been the man's company earlier in the night. The girl's older than she's painted up to look, with pancake white and baby-doll braids

"For your tears, dearie," the Abbess says, and the girl goes back to her tent, clutching the watch to her bare chest.

I sling the corpse across my shoulders and turn to take it back to the fish dump. The birds can have what they want, and whatever's left by morning won't be much to speak of. If the smell's still what I remember, no one's likely to notice him anyway.

"You shouldn't wait for trouble for an excuse to come to Chapel," the Abbess tells me. "Plen'y of the girls round here miss seein' what's left o'your face. You're good people, more or less."

As close to a compliment as anyone gets out of the Abbess, so I remind myself to chuckle.

She gives me a kiss on the cheek with her leathery lips, but I don't feel it.

I don't feel anything. I guess it's still better than dead.

High Concept

No, I haven't abandoned my alphabet posts, but as I was considering "H" words, I thought maybe one of those should get its own post. The dreaded, yet coveted "high concept".

It's something you'll hear over and over if you're trying to figure out how to pitch a particular story, but what does it mean?

If you've read this blog for a while, then you know that way back when I was a kidlet I had aspirations of being a screenwriter. Trying to figure out the ins and outs of that particular field was where I got my first taste of this idea called "high concept". And, like most people, I took the phrasing to mean that this was some big, complicated thing, because that's what it sounds like it should be, but the good news is -- it's not.

High concept means you can - clearly and concisely - explain your book/story/movie in one (maybe two) SHORT sentences. (And you thought boiling it down to a query summary was hard, ha!)

When you try and sell a screenplay, you develop a logline - the actual 1 or 2 sentence encapsulation of your entire story. And the "rules" aren't much different from those used to pitch a book.

Strip it down to the core premise - not plot, premise.

An orphaned boy learns magic so he can destroy the evil wizard who murdered his parents.

There are nearly 1,000,000 words in the Harry Potter series, and it takes less than 20 to give the premise.

A teenage girl discovers a family with a centuries old secret - they're vampires.

Twilight takes less than 15. (This would also work for Tuck Everlasting with "immortal" in place of "vampire")

A determined teen replaces her sister in a televised fight to the death.

Hunger Games.

The thing about a concept like The Hunger Games is that you can also get the concept across by putting it into the context of an existing idea.

It's Survivor, if getting voted off the island meant a spear through the heart.

There really isn't a sure fire way to do it "right", but basically, you want something like:

A [adjective] [noun - NOT the character's name. The name holds no meaning][strong verb, present tense, not state of being].

Preferably all of this will lead to a sense of the stakes for the story.

For Harry, avenging his parents is at stake.
For Twilight, discovering the secret is dangerous.
For Hunger Games, it's life or death.

Forget the plot, forget the subplots, forget the relationships and all the window dressing. High concept is only about the linchpin that holds the story together. It's that one, central something that would cause catastrophic failure if you removed it as an element of the story.

Hopefully, this will make it a little easier for you to determine.