COMING IN FEBRUARY!

Great news!  At least for the lovers of Neil Gaiman's prose and Norse Mythology.

Hear it from Neil himself:

"I've been writing a book of retellings of Norse Mythology since about 2012. 

Writing it slowly, between other things. Reading and reading my prose Eddas and my poetic Eddas, in any editions I could find.

 Now the book is done, and will be coming out in February. 

All the stories I loved, all the myth, many of the contradictions. 

Loki and Thor and Odin and Freyr and Sif and the rest, from the beginning of things through to Ragnarok and after."


His book even ties in with my short story that I submitted to IWSG Anthology recently.  

I may not win, but it is not the winning that counts ...

It is the refusing to give up.  

The heroes, heroines, and gods of Norse Mythology would understand.

Do any of you like Neil Gaiman?

I am giving away a free Neil Gaiman audiobook to each person who reviews THE NOT-SO-INNOCENTS ABROAD by the way.

  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01EUFRKKI/

ARE YOU PLAYING FOR KEEPS OR JUST PLAYING?

 Kristin Lamb wrote an intriguing post on how to write NO MATTER WHAT:

http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/how-to-become-a-lean-mean-writing-machine/

She points out that many of our noted writers were journalists, but forgot the two most famous:

 Mark Twain and Ernest Hemingway.

When the bullets are flying and the forest fire blazing, your editor does not have time to wait for your muse to become inspired.

She equates journalism with blogging since it is a form of digital journalism.

And she is right: 

We have to be concise, engaging, and convey the most information using the fewest words possible.

BUT IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR STORY …

Your novel is going nowhere.   

It will be buried under “wonderful moments” that tug at the heart and stalls your story.  

What is the story of LOTR? 

Is it Frodo throwing the Ring into the river of fire in Modor, or is it Frodo finding Frodo?

What is the story of GONE WITH THE WIND?   

Is it Scarlett hopelessly chasing Ashely Wilkes or vainly trying to retrieve the vanished South she loved?

LEARN TO SEE WHAT IS AROUND YOU.

Take the first face you see in the next crowd. Describe it in ways that would draw in a reader and accurately display what your eyes see.

What follows each major scene in your novel?  If it does not turn the reader’s expectation upside down, you’re going to bore her.

DRAW YOUR READER INTO YOUR NOVEL BY MAKING THEM PART OF IT.

How to do that?   

Give them a character to root for, to relate to.  All humans bleed, hope, have their hearts broken.  

Have your heroine suffer those universal blows.   

Better yet have your antagonist suffer them as well.

BE A DO-ER NOT A DREAMER.

Write every day.  Even if it is only a paragraph.  Write every day.

Make a Bonzai tree out of your novel.   

If you write 5 pages in the morning, refine them to 3 in the evening.

SAY IT IN QUALITY NOT QUANTITY.

November is coming up.  Forget volume.  Focus on value.

Have you ever read a novel and groaned, "Just get to the point!"

Don't do that to your reader.   

Raymond Chandler once wrote: "She gave him a look that jutted four inches out of his back."

Short.  Punchy.  Funny.

It made me want to read on.

I hope that this helped in some small way.  If not, read Kristen Lamb's blog.  I know she will help you.

A GOOD IDEA AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH_ghost of MARK TWAIN

 "A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere."

-Mark Twain.

Samuel Clemens, ghost here, to help Roland out a mite.

Seems that old blood center has changed up the rules a mite, and he is gonna have a fine time of it this weekend, trying to out solo Han Solo!

And I think my little cyber-column might help out you pilrims a mite, too.

After all, I was a newspaper man a'fore I became the great literary genius the world knows and loves.

Now, on to my gem of a post:

My quote next to my picture seems a bit self-evident, don't it?

Well, just read THE PASSAGE by that Justin Cronin fella or THE TONGUES OF SERPENTS.
Both meander worse than a sluggish Mississippi at ebb tide.

But they got published you wail. I was wailing, too ... after I read them.

Sure they got published ... after a string of good writing by said authors.

But Cronin pushed his readers at a distance with page after page after page of narrative summary.

Leave the lecturing for the classroom, Justin.

Now, you want to see how a new twist on vampires is done right?

Check out THE STRAIN by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan:
http://www.amazon.com/Strain-Trilogy-Book-ebook/dp/B002BD2V38/

Brrr.  I'm a ghost, and I simply refuse to fish with wiggling worms after reading that there book!

Old del Toro will keep you up nights with that book and the two that follow it!

Naomi Novak, poor girl, just seemed to lose her fire, having no danger, no crisis breathing down the neck of her heroes.

She managed the impossible:

she made a book about dragons boring.

I struggled like you pilgrims to get published. I learned my craft in the newspapers at which I worked one after another clear across this nation.

And in Virginia City, most of my critics toted six guns!

And I learned a few rules. I'll even share a few with you:

1.) The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

Ever hear two people tell the same joke? Both tell it differently. One always tells it better.

One tears it from his guts. The other pulls it out of his overcoat pocket. Talk to the heart of your listener, and you will never go wrong.

2.) Told or unfold?

Histories belong in the classroom. Novels are the place for scenes.

A scene takes place before the reader's eyes.

He sees the mysterious stranger being feared, not being told what a hoodoo he is. Your hero runs down the alley, ducking zinging bullets.

The reader sees it happen. He isn't told about it after the fact.

3.) What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers.

I've read a good bit of what passes for novels these days. They're leaner and meaner. No more Norman Rockwell, exact details down to the slightest freckle.

Novels today are impressionistic like the paintings or a film by that Hitchcock fellow.

Why, the most horrific story I ever heard centered on a monster only hinted at, never seen clear ... and the more fearsome because of that.

4.) Less is more when it comes to writing.

 If you hit the poor reader over the head with your point, you'll blunt your point and won't do much for the reader either.

5.) The best words are actions.


What did that Anton Chekhov fellow write?

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
Actions pulls your reader into the flow of the story.

Preambling just shoves him back to being a distant observer, not a participant.
Give the reader the taste of the wind, the feel of the grit in the badly cooked food, and the ache of a broken heart.

For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain and the noise of the battle.

No second-hand prose.

Draw the reader into the sound and feel of the actions. He will forget he is reading. He will become a part of the world you have created.


6.) The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.



Franklin D. Roosevelt originally wrote in his famous speech of December 8, 1941 "a date that will live in history." Later the President scratched out "history" and instead wrote "infamy."
And that line still rings down the corridors of time.

The amateur writer draws attention to himself ...
why, isn't that a beautiful description I've just pounded you over the head with for five pages?

The professional author knows that to draw the reader's attention to himself with mechanics is to draw it away from the story.

You want the reader to be so absorbed in your world that they're not even aware you, the writer, exists.


7.) Writing, I think, is not apart from living.


In fact, writing is a kind of double living. The writer experiences everything twice.

Once in reality and once in that mirror which waits always before or behind our memories.

***

AS THE ICE STORM SWALLOWS THE SOUTH

Robyn Alana Engel
http://rawknrobyn.blogspot.com/

has written a post on my challenge with cancer.  It is fine, compassionate, and ends with a lovely poem.

The essence of the poem is that "love is worth the sad." 

Which oddly enough is the theme of my latest novel (which I will not hawk and cheapen Robyn's gracious post.)

This ice storm may sever my connection with the internet with falling power lines --

which is no matter since I probably will be slipping and sliding along rural roads delievering rare blood to rural hospitals.

Say a prayer for me -- driving in this kind of weather is more than a little frightening.  As Neil Gaiman says:

“I don't really like driving in the snow.

There's something about the motion of the falling snowflakes that hurts my eyes, throws my sense of balance all to hell.

It's like tumbling into a field of stars.”

This ice storm reminds me of the last in 1997. 

My mother had just died.  The owner of the Mall where I had my store would not let me close.  He told me it would be a fine of $500 an hour should I defy him.

Then, the ice storm hit.  The power went out.  Roads were closed. 

And I had my day of mourning in the cold and the dark -- which was appropriate to my mood.

Then, as now, friends rallied to my aid, helping in ways that humbled me as the Father showed me loving souls were His Hands here on Earth.

I have tried to re-pay those acts by being there for others -- which sometimes chaffs Sandra, my best friend (also fighting cancer), for she says continually emptying my bank account for others leaves me vulnerable.

But aren't we all vulnerable?  Sometimes in ways of which we are blind.

Again, Neil Gaiman has a fitting quote:

“There are so many fragile things, after all. People break so easily, and so do dreams and hearts.” 

But he also wrote:

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” 

Which is why I fling my stories into the cold void of cyber-space.  Few read them. 

But it is my hope that my tales of Hibbs, the bear with two shadows,

and Samuel McCord who refuses to give up his love for She Who Devours --

may touch a hurting heart and spark an ember of hope to give a bruised soul light and strength enough for the next step into the darkness.

Thank you, my friends.
 

STRUGGLING WITH THAT NOVEL'S ENDING?

 

For all of you weary souls furiously typing your fingers into nubs on the end of your NaNoWriMo novels,

I thought the answer to that question might interest you.

I'm in the middle of DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE and putting down the seeds of its ending. 

I thought some of you might be thinking of how to wrap up your novel.  If you want an example of a great ending, look at Neil Gaiman's short film -- A DREAM OF FLYING:

https://www.longliveimagination.com//gallery/films/1018


An inept ending can kill your otherwise great book. So what questions do you need to ask about your ending?

1. Does it resolve the core conflict of the novel?
 
This is the big "this is what my book is about" question that your protagonist has spent the entire book trying to achieve.

 This is a biggie for series books, as there's a larger story arc across multiple books. But the goal in that one book needs to be resolved.

 2. Does it satisfy the major questions posed in the novel?

You don't have to tie up all the loose ends, but there are probably a few major things in the story readers will want to know answers to.

3. Is this the ending most readers are hoping for?

 We've all read books where we wanted one ending, but the book ended another way. Let down the reader, and you can bet she or he will not recommend your book.

4. Is your last line memorable, summing up your entire novel?

The trick of a good ending, of course, is that it must capture and equal everything that has gone before.

The line “He loved Big Brother” (from a novel that ends as masterfully as it begins) means very little until you understand exactly who Big Brother is. 

A great last line will have your reader putting down the book on her lap, murmuring, "Wow."  Guess what book she next recommends to her friends?

5.  A bad ending will unfailingly kill a good story. Is your ending such a one? 

 The ending is why the reader just invested their valuable time reading your story, and if it stinks, then they've wasted that time

6. Is there CHANGE at the end?

What makes a good ending hinges on the same things that make a good story. And the most important thing that makes a good story is change.

If nothing changes, nothing happens. And if nothing happens, you've got no story.

7. Do your characters save themselves or at least those they love?

If the U.S.S. Enterprise sails over the horizon to zap the bad guys in the nick of time. Say good-bye to repeat readers.

8. Resonance is the new Closure. Does your ending have it?

One symbol, or moment, from the beginning of the story is repeated at the end. By the time the story is done it means something else completely.

The ending echoes the beginning. It gives a sense that the story has come full circle.

9. Does it establish a new normal?

The heroes begin a new life. Sometimes the farm boy returns to the farm. Sometimes the farm boy becomes king. Sometimes the hero decides to set out on a new journey.

It's a chance to show how the character has been altered by the journey, and what they're going to do with that new knowledge.

10. What are your favorite kind of endings?

The best endings leave me full, and remain with me for days.

The best books make me wish they never end, but I know they have to.  Which is why I enjoy series books.

That's the sort of ending I like. What about you?

NOW WHAT?

http://www.amazon.com/HER-BONES-ARE-THE-BADLANDS-ebook/dp/B00FPFOJNO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1382894693&sr=8-1&keywords=HER+BONES+ARE+IN+THE+BADLANDS

(Only 99 cents)

 

1.) You've written a novel that to read it is to love it.

2.) You've chosen KeyWords and Categories on Amazon to bring readers eager to buy and read your type of book to your Book Page on Amazon.

NOW WHAT?

Hear that?

It is time ticking away. 

You have 10 seconds to engage and rivet the buying reader with your BOOK DESCRIPTION before she/he grows bored and goes off in search for a book that grabs her curiosity.

HOW DO YOU DO WRITE THAT WINNING BOOK DESCRIPTION?

1.) Find the heart of your story:

     a.) Imagine HarperCollins would accept a telegram from you and buy your book if you interested them in 10 words.

     b.) Try for one grabbing sentence at the start of it:

i.) Some things cannot die ... no matter how much you want them to.

ii.) When reality bites, bite back.

2.) Study the Masters:

Take the description to NEVERWHERE by Neil Gaiman:

Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he finds bleeding on a London sidewalk.

His small act of kindness propels him into a world he never dreamed existed. There are people who fall through the cracks, and Richard has become one of them.

And he must learn to survive in this city of shadows and darkness, monsters and saints, murderers and angels, if he is ever to return to the London that he knew.

(93 words)

3.) Think movie preview:

a.) The movie trailer doesn't give the whole story.

b.) It gives a hero to root for, an enemy to boo, a love interest that tempts and tortures, and a unique crisis that seems impossible to overcome.

4.) Drop your reader into the crucible of your story:

a.) Write in third person, present tense.

Even though your book is most likely told in past tense, your book description is not.

You are describing this book as if you're sitting face to face with the reader, and they've asked you what the book is about.

b.) Use emotional power words.
You are trying to evoke emotions with your book description, the same emotions that your book evokes. To convey these feelings, you need emotional powers words like tormented, charismatic, passion, obsession, terrifying, etc.

There are too many to mention here, but a quick search for "Power Words" on the internet will produces hundreds of words to choose from.

Like spice, use them sparingly. For 100 words use five to six.  Any more is LIKE WRITING YOUR NOVEL IN ALL CAPITALS!
Count the number of Power Words in NEVERWHERE's book description.

5.) Want another example?  Take Dean Koontz's THE GOOD GUY:

Timothy Carrier, a quiet stone mason having a beer in a California bar, meets a stranger who mistakes him for a hit man. The stranger slips Tim a manila envelope containing $10,000 in cash and a photo of the intended victim, Linda Paquette, a writer in Laguna Beach, then leaves.

A moment later, Krait, the real killer, shows up and assumes Tim is his client. Tim manages to distract Krait from immediately carrying out the hit by saying he's had a change of heart and offering Krait the $10,000 he just received.

This ploy gives the stone mason enough time to warn Linda before they begin a frantic flight for their lives.  (120 words)

6.) Another?  FEAR NOTHING by Koontz again:

Christopher Snow understands the night. He lives on the mysterious darker edge of society. Snow is afflicted with xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disease that makes ultraviolet rays-even those from lamps and televisions-deadly.

His condition makes him a pariah in the isolated small town of Moonlight Bay where the ignorant and insensitive fear what they do not know.

Snow's father dies, leaving him with only a handful of offbeat but fiercely loyal friends to turn to for understanding. At the morgue, Snow accidentally witnesses his father's body being replaced with the mutilated corpse of a vagrant.

Before he can find out what is behind this crime, he receives a frantic summons from a friend who is brutally murdered before she can finish explaining a strange story about monkeys and a secret project at the government compound at the edge of town.

What begins as a disturbing puzzle quickly becomes a sinister conspiracy as Snow uncovers evidence of uncanny intelligence in many of the local animals and inhumanely vicious tendencies in some of the human residents of the Bay.

They are "becoming" he learns, but becoming what?  (200 words)

Show Less

THE MOST IMPORTANT POST YOU WILL EVER READ

You read my title and said,

"Get real."

Exactly.

Get real. Or never get picked up by an agent.

As a writer of urban fantasy,

I have to convince my readers that Samuel McCord, Victor & Alice and their enemies are real,

or they will never buy my fantastical setting and plot as "real."

No matter what you write, you must do the same. Or the readers will never become absorbed into your novel.

How do you do that?

By remembering ...

1) "God and Country" ain't what it used to be.

Duty and honor were once valid motivations. But Shakespeare is dead.

This is the "Me" generation. Even if you're writing about women in the 1700's, you are not writing FOR them.

Abigail Adams sacrificed much for her husband and family. But her letters showed a woman who insisted on owning her own property and money

(very much NOT the custom of the time.)

All of us have had to deal with a situation, not because it was honorable, but because it was heaved into our laps.

Abigail comes across as real because her letters showed she resented her husband's ambition that took him from his children and her so often and for so long.

She fumed at his inability to get along with others.

Ambition, vanity, irritability -- she saw his warts. But they were warts on a face she loved. We can "buy" a woman who sees clearly but loves deeply.

2) Ah, Love ...

"Put the rat cage on her. On her!"

In 1984, Winston is tortured by the Thought Police until he finally breaks and screams for his tormenter to put the rat cage on Julia, the woman he "loves."

Sex is a primal motivator not love.

Man will sacrifice much for love but generally there must be a good chance of success, or your average reader will feel your novel is cliche not real.

Your hero may be different and sacrifice all for love, but that extremism must apply to all facets of his life or your reader will not "buy" your hero.

3.) Curiosity killed the cat ... and the bad novel.

Without curiosity, fire and most of Man's discoveries would never have been made. But as with love, there is a limit to how much we will sacrifice for curiosity.

When a mother's children are threatened by her curiosity, she will generally grudgingly back off.

Up the punishment enough, and all of us curious types will say, "I'm outta here!"

But by the time that moment comes, realistically, it is too late. And that leads us to the next point :

4) Self-preservation or
"I'll miss you terribly, but that last life preserver is mine!"

We like to think the world is a nice place. But try being an ill, frail woman on a crowded bus and see how selfless most people are.

To continue when threats to his life are enormous, your main character must have more than self-preservation to keep on --

perhaps he/she cannot depend on the promises or threats of the adversary to keep his/her children and spouse safe.

Or as so often in life, the hero simply has no choice but to go on. The bee hive has been toppled -- and it's simply run or be stung to death.

5) Greed or

"Excuse me. Is that my hand in your pocket?"

Greed is good -- as Michael Douglas once said. But only up to a point.

For one thing, greed is not something which endears our hero to the reader. Another, shoot at most greedy folks, and they will head for more hospitable hills.

5) Revenge consumes ... the individual and the reader's patience.

Revenge is understandable but not heroic.

In historical or Western novels, where justice was bought or simply non-existent, revenge is a valid motivation ...

often justified under the rationalization, justice.

Revenge in our civilized times must occur when lapses in order happen.

Say when civilization died with the power in New Orleans during and after Katrina.

Revenge on your adversary's part must be understandable, or your plot will become cliche. Revenge must be supplemented with other aspects of the character.

Say a priest, defending his flock of homeless during Katrina, must choke off his desire for revenge for a raped little girl

to stay by his remaining flock to protect them. Playing the desire for revenge against love for helpless family can lend depth to your novel --

making it real.

For who of us has not burned for revenge against a tresspass against us but had to bite back the darkness within?

6) We want to believe ...

Despite all the harsh things I've said of love (and by inference, friendship), the reader wants to believe ...

A) that when the moment comes, we can reach within ourselves and find the hero hiding there.

B) that love can survive dark, hard times if we but simply refuse to let go of it.

C) that humor and wit can overcome the larger, stronger predator -- that we can become Ulysses challenging the gods -- and winning.

7) Give your readers a semblance of reality while still giving them the three things that they want to believe of themselves and of life --

and your novel will be a bestseller.
{Victor & Alice drawn by the incomparable Leonora Roy}
***
{Thea's song for Neil Gaiman's AMERICAN GODS}

RULES TO WRITING_RAYMOND CHANDLER, GHOST, HERE

*
{"If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it."
— Ernest Hemingway.}

Raymond Chandler, ghost, here.


I'm substituting for Roland who is laid out with that migraine still. To hurt like that and still have to work a weekend he was supposed to be off.

Hemingway and I are going to pay his supervisor a visit later on tonight. We'll be bringing the ghost of Lovecraft with us. We'll explain some things to him.

Speaking of Hemingway, I don't know if I totally agree with those words of his I quoted earlier.

But they occur to me as I think of the star-crossed love of Alice Wentworth, the Victorian ghoul, and Victor Standish.

The pair remind me of a young Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in my BLUE DAHLIA.

You, who visit Roland's blog, think Victor's and Alice's love affair is fiction. Alas, it is not. Fiction, unlike truth, must be logical.

And as Alice Wentworth keeps saying : Their love breaks the chain of reason.

Reason you say? Yes, and good fiction must obey the RULES.

Let me tell you the SECRET RULES TO WRITING FICTION :

Rules. Most struggling writers think there are mysterious magic rules out there that if followed will insure success.

There aren't. But I'll give them to you, anyway.

Rule #1 :
The most durable thing in writing is style. I had mine. Hemingway had his. We're both imitated.

Be inspired by your favorite authors but leave them be. Keep the original. Lose the copy. Be yourself. But a self that grows each day.

Rule #2 :
Unlike the age of Jane Austin, this age is not remote. It is as intimate as a lonely heart and as intense as the bill collector over your phone.

Do not cliche your words. Brutality is not strength. Flipness is not wit. Do not mistake cool for character, attitude for competence.

It is not funny that a man is killed. But it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization.

Rule #3 :
It's the journey, the struggles of the hero that grab the reader and keep him turning the pages. Make the hero sweat. But let him get the girl. Even Victor will get -- no, I won't go there. I can't.

Rule #4 :
Pull your nose from the computer keyboard and live life -- don't just write about it. Tasting each drink, feeling each breeze, touching the soft skin of the woman who loves you and only you.

God, I hope Victor does that with Alice ...

if only for a moment.

Sorry, you don't need to read an old ghost's keening.

Rule #5 :
Remember that human nature has learned nothing over the centuries, yet has forgotten nothing either. Men do things for reasons.

Your characters, if they are to be believed, must do so, too. You cannot shove them into actions that your prior words would not imply they would take.

Yet human nature is fickle : a man who is steel in the fires of adversity will melt at the glance of a pair of ice blue eyes. Eyes like Alice has ....

Sorry ... that ... that is all I have the heart for.

I will sit out on Roland's terrace now and look out as the night fog slips away from the bordering bayou.

The rains are over. The fields are still green.

And with my ghost eyes I will look out over the vastness of America to the Hollywood Hills and see snow on the high mountains.

The fur stores will be advertising their annual sales. The call houses that specialize in sixteen year-old virgins will be doing a land-office business. In Beverly Hills the jacaranda trees will be beginning to bloom.

And none of that will matter ... for I know how it must end for Victor and Alice.

The French have a saying that to say good-bye is to die a little. They are right. I am a ghost, and I thought I was past feeling dead inside. I was wrong.

I think I will always see Victor walking down lonely streets, leaning against the grimy bricks of shadowy dead-end alleys, saddened but never quite defeated.

Down those mean streets Victor went who was not himself mean, who was neither tarnished nor afraid ... only mortal -- who loved too well ... and not at all wisely.
***
Why not LIKE the kid's AMAZON author page? You wouldn't want a visit from Lovecraft's ghost would you? www.amazon.com/author/rolandyeomans
*
This is a standard publicity photo taken to promote a film role. As stated by film production expert Eve Light Honathaner in The Complete Film Production Handbook, (Focal Press, 2001 p. 211.):

"Publicity photos (star headshots) have traditionally not been copyrighted. Since they are disseminated to the public, they are generally considered public domain, and therefore clearance by the studio that produced them is not necessary."

Nancy Wolff, includes a similar explanation:

"There is a vast body of photographs, including but not limited to publicity stills, that have no notice as to who may have created them." (The Professional Photographer's Legal Handbook By Nancy E. Wolff, Allworth Communications, 2007, p. 55.)--Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 09:35, 15 December 2009 (UTC)****

WE GUESS WITH OUR FEARS

Dear Author :

Thank you for thinking of us. Unfortunately, this is not quite right for us. Better luck with it elsewhere. Your day will come. You can watch it from heaven.

By the way, your lucky numbers are : 9 - 12 - 21- 35 - 42 -54.

Form rejections.

You hate them. I hate them. We all get them.

Basically, it's silence from the agent's end.

And when you receive only silence from someone important, you're left to guess why. And we guess with our fears. And I've usually noticed from other areas of my life, what I fear usually isn't even in the same galaxy with the truth of the situation.

I would wager that is true with the silence of form rejections. But a wager is just a fancy word for a guess. And we've come full circle.

We've heard the truth before : it isn't personal. And it truly isn't. You're not paying the agent a cent. She is under no obligation to teach you how to write a letter or a novel. We're job applicants. Period.

Play turnabout. What would you want in a query if you had to read hundreds a week? No brainer. Short ones. All right, then. We have our first requirement : make that sucker short.

Short means no fluff. No Hamlet introduction. Just straight to the point. What would you want next if hundreds of queries surged in a rush of cyber-diarrhea into your inbox?

Something different. Something catchy. Written by someone who didn't have a chip on her/his shoulder. And the tone?

Not misleading. Not written in a funny vein if the novel is a tragedy.

O.K. Write the query short, with a hook up front, and in the tone of the novel you're submitting. We've getting a better idea now on how to write our next query.

What else would you want in those thousands of emails a month? Short paragraphs. Well-written ones without errors that grate like nails on the blackboard.

Ones easy to reject in a second :

Ones that are illiterate. Ones that query for genres you don't handle. Ones that query for carbon copies of hit sellers. Ones that whine.

All right. Now, we have an idea of what NOT to do.

What do we do next?

Look at your query. Does it do your novel justice? Would it make a total stranger want to read your novel with "Wow, that sounds neat! I gotta read this."

Is there building tension in your summation? Are the stakes primal : threat to survival, sex, or family? Is your hero likeable, clever, funny? He/she better be.

Even a detailed letter of why your query was rejected would still leave you wondering, without a true direction to follow. One agent's take is not gospel. Trust your instincts.

You are a reader. Try reading your query as an agent would. Try reading your novel as a stranger would. Then, as my friend, Heather, suggests : read it aloud. You'll hear flaws you never would find otherwise.

And now a word from Neil Gaiman {courtesy of http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/1065561 }

By now you're probably ready to give up.

You're past that first fine furious rapture when every character and idea is new and entertaining. You're not yet at the momentous downhill slide to the end. You're in the middle, a little past the half-way point.

The glamour has faded, the magic has gone, your back hurts from all the typing. You don't know why you started your novel, you no longer remember why you imagined that anyone would want to read it, and you're pretty sure that even if you finish it it won't have been worth the time or energy.

Welcome to the club.

That's how novels get written.

You write. That's the hard bit that nobody sees. You write on the good days and you write on the lousy days. Like a shark, you have to keep moving forward or you die. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Writing is a continual search for the word that will fit in the text, in your mind, on the page. Plot and character and metaphor and style, all these become secondary to the words.

The search for the word gets no easier but nobody else is going to write your novel for you.

The last novel I wrote (it was ANANSI BOYS, in case you were wondering) when I got three-quarters of the way through I called my agent.

I told her how stupid I felt writing something no-one would ever want to read, how thin the characters were, how pointless the plot. I strongly suggested that I was ready to abandon this book and write something else instead, or perhaps I could abandon the book and take up a new life as a landscape gardener, bank-robber, short-order cook or marine biologist.

And instead of sympathising or agreeing with me, or blasting me forward with a wave of enthusiasm---or even arguing with me---she simply said, suspiciously cheerfully, "Oh, you're at that part of the book, are you?"

I was shocked. "You mean I've done this before?"

"You don't remember?"

"Not really."

"Oh yes," she said. "You do this every time you write a novel. But so do all my other clients."

I didn't even get to feel unique in my despair.

So I put down the phone and drove down to the coffee house in which I was writing the book, filled my pen and carried on writing.

One word after another.

That's the only way that novels get written and, short of elves coming in the night and turning your jumbled notes into Chapter Nine, it's the only way to do it.

So keep on keeping on. Write another word and then another.

Pretty soon you'll be on the downward slide, and it's not impossible that soon you'll be at the end. Good luck...

Neil Gaiman


Hope this helps in some small way. And here is a beautiful melody in an equally beautiful music video :