Resolutions

It's the eve of 2010 and I find myself looking back on the past year with little in the way of regrets.

I started 2009 with a crazy idea: to write a book. I've since written three. Well two full novels and two half-completed novels.

2010 brings me the resolution to persevere. To keep writing. To keep seeking an agent and publisher. To drive forward at full speed.

In that spirit, I made a few changes. I renamed Force. It's now called It's a Kind of Magic. The reason for the change is to allow continuity in the titles of the series. I hope to include the word "magic" in each title, and hopefully use a song title or lyric for the title. Other titles i'm tossing about include Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic and Black Magic Woman.

Also, I signed up to Authonomy.com today. It's a site owned by HarperCollins. It allows aspiring authors to post there work to the site for peer review, and the top rated books get selected by HarperCollins for review.

Here's the link to my book: http://authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=15163

Please go there, sign up (it's free and there's no spam!) and then click on "Back this Book."

Okay, I'm done with the shameless self promotion. :)

Social Media and the Publishing World

A new trend among authors right now is to generate buzz before their book is published, that way, you can show agents and publishers that people will want to buy your book. Social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace are all great ways to exploit oneself to the web world.

I'm not a fan of MySpace, which is more media centric anyway. As for Twitter, I have an account (@shawnapiranha) but to be honest, I still don't really understand the whole concept behind it.

So I took to Facebook. The other day I created a fanpage for myself (I didn't want one just for Force because i wanted to be able to update it with the sequels when the time comes). It was very weird trying to create a fan site based on me. I don't really know what people would want to know!

But, after a few hours (yes, hours!) I came up with a barebones site. I posted the first three chapters of Force as well as a few discussion topics, some of which were started by the characters from the story as well (hmm... how did they get on facebook, I wonder?)

Anyway, after five days, I have 79 fans! The more exciting thing is that at least 20 of them are people I don't know! They aren't even in my extended network! It's pretty exciting to have complete strangers writing positive reviews about a book they've only read the beginning of.

So I guess the big experiment will be seeing how this pans out in the long run. Fingers crossed!

No, I'm not a slacker, I've just been preoccupied.

I guess it looks bad when someone starts a blog about writing, and then doesn't write in it for over a month.

What can I say, I've been busy!

I just closed on a condo, and the past three weeks I've spent organizing moving and inspections and the like. Needless to say, writing has kind of fallen off the table.

At first I was a bit disappointed in myself for not writing recently, but then I remembered a promise I made to myself upon finishing the sequel to Force: Take a break!

So, after taking a break from writing to enjoy summer, and pursue agent representation, I've decided to pick it back up again. I'm not yet writing the third and final story related to Force, but instead, I've started a new, completely different tangent.

I've tentatively titled it After... Life. It follows a girl who wakes up one morning not with amnesia, but instead with entirely different memories of what her life has been. Alternating chapters are from her husband's point of view as he struggles to deal with the new person his wife has become.

I'm really liking the way the plot is forming in my head, but unfortunately, I may have bit off more than i can chew with this one. It's hard to write two identical chapters from two separate points of view, especially when i don't happen to write them together on the same day.

Anyway, that's my update. Still pursuing agents for Force, but not aggressively at the moment.

Oh! And I had someone finally read my still-untitled sequel, and she loved it! And she's not related to me, so that makes me believe her opinion more :)

I think the compliment may have been the push I needed to start up again.

Heat Wave!

Summer has hit Victoria with a fierce passion. It is so stinkin' hot out right now, and has been for the past week. Sounds great, right?

Well, yes, it has been lovely. But it also means I've been less than productive on writing to agencies because I'm out enjoying the weather. I finished my second novel a week or so ago, and was all set to hunker down on getting an agent, but instead I goofed off and went to the beach, and for hikes and such.

It was wonderful.

Today, however, I'm back at the letter writing. I'm feeling particularly determined now. I have to admit, I've been pretty selective at which agencies I contact, but until I exhaust those picks, I'm holding out for quality.

Besides that, I've already started book three, which I know I said I wasn't going to do, but the ideas are flowing! I can't help it! And people like Sharlene and my boss keep pushing me for more more more that it encourages me to write!

Le sigh.

Blindness

I've been contemplating putting up a playlist on here. Music is highly influential to me when i write, and I find i am discovering all sorts of new music as my moods shifts with the story. I may post the full playlist at some point but for now i just want to post this song, Blindness, by Metric. It reminds me of when Alex is discovers she is blind. The song is quite haunting.


Send us a blindfold, send us a blade
Tell the survivors help is on the way

I was a blindfold, never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet

Got us a battle, leave it up to me

Find us a trap door, find us a plane
Tell the survivors help is on the way

I was a blindfold never complained
All the survivors singing in the rain
I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a life I never chose

I wanna leave but the world won't let me go
I wanna leave but the world won't let me go

What it is and where it stops nobody knows
You gave me a battle I never chose

I was the one with the world at my feet
Got us a battle, leave it up to me

Knots in my tummy

Hey all,

It's been a while since i posted on here, and for good reason: I had hit a writer's block *gasp*. This past weekend though was sunny and beautiful, and yesterday I took my lappy down to starbucks got to work.

First i researched a few more agents, and sent out some more queries. Then, after getting bored of that, I finally got cracking.

I'm still not done the sequel, but i wrote about 5000 words, and finally have the end in sight. My problem was that I knew how to end it, but not how to tie it into the third (and final) novel in the series. I hadn't developed the storyline enough in that one that allowed me to make the connections i needed.

So, anyway, after writing a bunch out yesterday, I'm back to tummy knots and anxiousness as I write again. This is good, in the sense that completion is near, and the knots are from my creative spirit wrangling about new ideas in my head, but it's also a bit annoying when i'm trying to do my real job. What's even harder is trying to remember everything that randomly pops into my head until i get home to my laptop.

So that's my update. I'm going to write more tonight after baseball I hope, and also work on the development of a new character for book 3: his name is October, and he will be a key player in the final showdown.... *insert ominous music here*

Updates!

So it's been a while since I've written here, and to be honest it's because i have writers' block! GASP!

I'm nearing the end of the second story, and I can't figure out how to wrap it up!! EEP! So I have gone back and re-read the whole thing, and still am stuck.

Then I went back and fixed up Force again. I sent out some more query letters (five) and heard back from three. Two said no, but one wanted a partial manuscript!! Sweet!! I went through all the letters I've sent so far, and including the five i just sent, I've only sent out 12 letters (I miscalculated in an earlier post). So 2 responses out of 12 is pretty good in terms of odds. Now all I need is a positive response from the agent and we're on our way!

Also, I want to thank all those people out there who are reading my book and helping me with edits and suggestions. It's been a huge help and also helps me keep writing - you're good for my creative juices! Thanks!

That's all for now... hoping i can bust this writer's block soon....

Kudos

I received this email the other day from my boss, who is the most recent person to read my manuscript. It made me gleeful so i had to post it:

I’m on page 7. I can’t wait to read the rest...that’s the highest accolade I can give a book. There are books that grab you from the beginning and this is one of them. Who is this mysterious stranger?! There are others that don’t grab you until considerably later. I’d hate to think how many of those I’ve missed over the years because I just couldn’t force myself back into it...this one won’t be a problem. Uh oh. I can see myself bleary eyed and lying there frozen stiff at 1:00 am again, so’s not to disturb the sleeping grizzly by any tell-tale Ah HAH!’s or shifting to get more comfortable...it’ll be all your fault, you know.

Since I'm tooting my own horn, I might as well include some others. Re-reading them gives me motivation to keep writing!

Ok, so I finished your book this morning :) I totally enjoyed it a lot. I don't think I've read a book so quickly before or spent so much time just sitting and reading (well maybe besides Harry Potter lol). I really like how you wrote so that there was such a vivid picture in my mind of what was going on. You alluded to many places that I knew of and so this helped a lot (ie. French beach, inner harbour, the blue bridge etc). Anyways, loved it a lot and can't wait for the sequel. I'll see you in a lil over a week! Love you lots, Shar

And from my mom:

Hi Shawna- Your book was wonderful, I just finished reading it! And it's definitely set the stage for a few more adventures for the happy couple. I really enjoyed it and am so honoured that I got to read it (first, i think) I love you very much and am so proud of you.

Aren't moms great? She definitely was the reason i finished the first book so quickly. She kept pushing me for more chapters.

I'm still working on the untitled sequel. Just wrapping up a few loose bits, and it's driving me bananas!!

Mmm... bananas....

Word Count

Learned something new today:

When calculating word count for something that will be published, you shouldn't use the word count tool found in your word processing software.

Why?

Well, agents and publishers are more interested in how much space your manuscript will take up, rather than the precise word count. Dialogue, for example, often has few words, but will take up more space due to paragraph breaks.

So, instead of using the word count tool, you should use this formula:

For a double-spaced, 12-point Courier document, with 1" margins, calculate approximately 250 words per page.

Force is approximately 71,000 words when calculated using word count. But, by using the above formula, it is 91,500 words in terms of the publishing world.

Wow, that makes me feel like i wrote way more than i did! I'll take it!

Getting an Agent

Something I've learned about trying to get published: You can't just write to publishers and hope they will want to read your manuscript. There are a few publishers that accept letters like this, but for the most part, you have to go through agent.

It is not easy to get an agent.

I did some research on how to go about getting one, and it is quite the process. First you need to write a Query Letter. The letter essentially the equivalent of a cover letter on a resume. You need to talk about who you are, what you've written/published in the past, your experiences and also give a summary, including word count, of your story.

For me, it was really difficult to toot my own horn. Furthermore, I hadn't ever tried to summarize my story in a paragraph. Sure, I can tell you all about it in a long drawn out description, but summarizing was difficult. When i finally got my letter written, I did some more research.

Apparently, a previously unpublished author, such as myself, can expect to send out hundreds of query letters, and if you're lucky, you will get a positive response from ten or so. About a 5% return. Yikes.

I jumped the gun and started sending out letters soon after I had finished the first round of edits of my manuscript. Most agents just ask for the letter, but a few ask for the first couple chapters as well. I figured that by the time i started getting responses I would have fine tuned Force enough by then that it would be ready to be sent out in full.

You can expect wait two weeks or so for a response from an emailed query letter (up to six weeks for snail mail). I had only sent off about a dozen letters before i heard back from the first agent. I reprinting it here because he was the only agent so far to send me back a response that wasn't a form letter (agent's name is deleted):

Dear Shawna:

Thank you for your recent query letter. I appreciate your patience while I’ve considered your project.

Unfortunately, I'm afraid I must pass on Force. The prologue got off to a great start, giving Alexis a strong and likable voice and a strong hint of intriguing things to come. The chapter, however, I felt got bogged down in backstory. You clearly know a lot about the characters and world you created, but I feel the story might be too caught up in the details rather than focusing on the plot.

Thanks again for thinking of me. Please accept my best wishes for your project’s success.

I wasn't upset when i read his response. I had known my first chapter needed work. It was 30 pages long, whereas the rest of the book averaged about 10 pages per chapter. But, I also had already started book two, and the ideas were spilling out of me so fast i didn't want to revisit Force. I decided to hold off sending out more query letters until i could properly revist the first chapter.

In the meantime, the rejections kept coming in. I had four come in that week, all in a form letter format. I never heard from the other six (that means no). I did finally hear from one agent who requested my manuscript. Yay!! But i hadn't fully retooled my manuscript. Still, I was too excited to wait. I sent if off immediatly, but was determined not to get too optimistic.

It's been just about six weeks (you can expect to wait 4-6 weeks for a response from a manuscript request), and i still haven't heard anything. I wrote the agent a follow up email, but haven't heard back from that either.

It's okay though. The lack of response reminded me i needed to go back and fix up those first thirty pages. I rewrote them last night. Chapter 1 is now four chapters, and instead of being told in the past tense, i told it in the present tense, giving more weight to why Alex ends up working for Mobius in the first place.

I'm happy now, despite having placed the agent hunting on hold. I think i might try again in a couple weeks.

Late Night Musings

I'm not going to write too much tonight; I just wanted to talk about a problem I am having with my writing.

One of the things you don't expect when you write is that the story takes over your thoughts. I think about plot and characters at work, when I'm driving, and mostly, when I am trying to go to sleep (such as right now).

This is how Force first came to be, mind you. I had an idea and couldn't sleep, so I wrote it down.

Tonight, as has been the case for most nights this past week, I find myself sleepless and anxious. I am coming up to the conclusion of book two, and I'm stuck. I have three paths I can take, but none are quite what I want in order to open up for the final story in the trilogy. At first, I wanted to wait it out until an idea hit me, but then I thought I might go back and re-read the whole thing (something I haven't done yet, but was going to wait until it was finished).

I had just decided to re-read, when I got an email from a friend who is currently reading Force. I asked him to be critical of it, and he offered some great advice. I haven't gone back to Force for about a month (since I started book two), and could probably use the refresher. Plus, I've been wanting to make up character profiles as well.

So tonight, instead of re-reading as I had planned, I decided to go back to book one and re-examine it. I know i need to re-tool chapter one, and possibly add some depth to a few spots, so i figured this would be a good place to start.

Except then I got distracted, and by the time I got back to my computer, it was too late to give my reading the proper attention. So, being the smart person I am, I decided to go to bed.

It's now 12:30am, I'm still awake, and I've spent the past hour and a half writing the third novel in my head, while simultaneously re-writing chapter one of Force.

These characters are becoming such a part of me, that I can't get them out of my head! I'm not complaining, but I wouldn't mind some sleep.

Mobius, Inc.

*disclaimer: this is a rant from my imagination, though I'm curious to hear how other people imagined Mobius. Please let me know by leaving a comment below*

Mobius, Inc. is the name of the company who recruits Alex, the protagonist in Force. When I thought up the building itself, I wanted it to be unique and mysterious.

I thought for a long time about what to name the company, and I toyed with various words like Infinity and Myth Inc. None seemed to fit the "mysterious" factor. I didn't want too much to be given away by the name. At the same time, I wanted a metaphor that would suit the company's founder (who I will get into in a later post).

I finally came up with the name of Mobius right around the time I had to physically write the company's name down. I typed it without realizing it, and when I read it back, it worked.

I also started thinking about what sort of logo this company would have, and I immediately remembered a piece of art I saw while living in Kelowna. Actually, this is one of my favorite pieces of modern art I've ever seen.

The sculpture is outside the Kelowna library, and is decorated with characters from all sorts of languages - quite fitting for the locale, in my opinion.

Anyway, this was the source of my inspiration for Mobius' outside sculpture, however, i modified it slightly. Instead of having it covered in letters, i had it covered in quotes. I wanted this in order to help convey Alex's overall clumsiness, as well as her thirst for knowledge. She is particularly attracted to the Douglas Adams' quote "The art of falling is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss," as it reminded her of how often she trips on things. (On another note, I had originally thought I might have her learn to fly, and the quote might come into play again, but I'm nearly finished the sequel and still haven't found this necessary for the story.

Once I established the bronze infinity symbol, the rest of the building fell into place in my mind. It would be circular, and modern. Inside the floors would wrap around the outer walls, creating a large open space inside, where I decided would hang the fossilized "dinosaur" skeleton down the center (again, more on that in a future post).

I wrote all about the building, and even kept more details in my head without knowing i had seen a similar building before. I went to see The International when it was in theaters, and the big shootout takes place in the Guggenheim. When i saw the Guggenheim, I knew this was Mobius, or at least a fair approximation of it. The funny part was, I had already finished Force and was well into the second book before I noticed the similarity. Mobius is taller and thinner, and the exterior has way more windows, but the interior is essentially the same. The only big difference is that Mobius has a glass elevator, around where the "bulb" part sticks out in the Guggenheim. I've included two pictures below, one of the interior of the Guggenheim, and one of a different building which is more like the exterior.

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The image of the Mobius strip is from http://activerain.com/image_store/uploads/4/1/5/7/3/ar123710316137514.jpg
The image of the Guggenheim interior is from http://www.jmg-galleries.com/blog_images/121506_guggenheim_II_520c.jpg
The image of my idea of the Mobius exterior is from http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/5848181/2/istockphoto_5848181-round-office-building.jpg

Set the Scene

As promised, here is a bit of background about myself, and about my first novel, Force.

I graduated from the University of Victoria with a Bachelor's of Arts in English. A lot of people have asked me why I got an English degree, and to be perfectly honest, it was because it was the degree that got me out of school the fastest. At the time I had to declare, I had spent two years prepping to go into teaching, then when i realized that wasn't for me, I took another year of random courses trying to figure out what I wanted to do. At the end of the third year, I still had no idea, so I ended up taking my English degree.

In school, my least favourite thing to do was write essays. I never did well on them. The only thing that was somewhat tolerable about writing an essay was that, in the English department, you can pretty much say whatever you want, so long as you back it up. That was the only reason I got through a lot of it. I made a lot of stuff up.

So needless to say, I've never been much of a writer. I've dabbled here and there. The most I've written of anything up until now, was the beginnings of a novel (which I later reformatted into a script), loosely based on an alternate future of my own life, stemming from grade eleven, where something didn't happen, but very nearly did. (Isn't that nice and confusing?) Anyway, I never got anywhere with that story, despite working on it here and there over a few years.

Force came about from a sleepless night. I kept tossing and turning, trying to fall asleep, but my mind kept racing with ideas of this woman who could see magic. I had just finished the Twilight series, as well as The Girl's Guide to Witchcraft trilogy, and found I was wanting more. These books are fantasy for women, a genre that doesn't really exist right now. The closest thing before the Twilight era (which has bred numerous doppelganger books) was a series I read a few years back called Enchanted, Inc. My brain wanted more: more fantasy, more magic, more romance, more chick power.

So finally, after a few hours of restlessness while this concept brewed in my end, I turned my laptop on, more out of frustration than anything else. My plan was to just jot down the ideas so i could safely go to sleep without forgetting them, but I ended up writing the first two chapters. It was 4am before I finally tore myself away, and i literally had to tear. I had to work 4 hours later.

When i got home from work that day, I kept writing, spewing out thousands of words in one sitting. It never stopped. Less than three weeks later, I had written the 70,000+ word manuscript that is now Force. It's not as long as I would have liked (I was aiming for 100,000 words; Twilight is 130,000), but it is still quite substantial for a first novel. Plus, I kept notes of ideas while I wrote, which has now spawned the sequel (currently I'm 55,000 words into that, though I've been slightly delayed due to the fact I've been without a laptop for over a month), and also will breed the final book in the series. Both are untitled at the moment, and i will blog about them soon enough.

So that's the background of how Force came to be. I will leave you with my proposed jacket blurb (the writing you would find on the back cover):

"If you had asked me about myself a few weeks ago, I would have told you that I'm your everyday, girl-next-door, struggling to pay off student loans working in a job I hate. Sounds pretty normal, right? That was before I started working for Mobius, Inc., when my whole world turned upside down.

Why? Well, shortly after starting work at Mobius, I began seeing "force lines," strange energy-filled cords floating through the air. Unfortunately, no one else seems to be able to see them, or store their energy inside themselves like I can. Now, I find myself being chased by a deranged fallen star, watched over by a seven foot tall leprechaun with a penchant for Guinness, and occasionally conversing with an inanimate fossil suspended in the lobby at work. Needless to say, I feel anything but normal."

First Post!

Hi! Welcome to my blog!

I created this blog as a way to keep track of my new hobby - writing! This past January I wrote a novel, which i am in the process of getting published. I am also working on the sequel, and hope to write a third book in the series soon. The whole process has been, and still is, enlightening to me.

Trying to get a book published is hard work, and this blog will document that. Also, I hope to keep people up to date on my writing status, and maybe even write some impromptu other things which I will post here as well.

Anyway, that's all for the first post. I will detail more of what is going on in my next post, including the status of Force, as well as the yet-unnamed sequel.