Tag Archives: novel

August 5, 2012 · 1:55 pm

Sunday sampler: The Painted Beast: Prologue: three years ago

[Editor’s note: this is the start of a novel I have written and am rewriting. Thought I would post the beginning to see what reaction it might get, to see if it holds your attention and piques your curiosity. Comments welcome.]

Steve shoved on his sunglasses, but they didn’t help. Pulsing reds and blues still stabbed at his eyes. Even the reds and blues bouncing off the concrete Interstate divider took aim at his pain.

Dusk dragged an evening shroud down from the sky, but it wasn’t promising relief.

Of his few remaining friends in the Knoxville Police Department, one had called and told him Stephanie was in an accident. She had pinned a motorcyclist against the barrier and had painted with him and his bike for about 300 feet.

Steve took twenty minutes to move with the knot of cars until he stopped behind a police cruiser blocking a traffic lane on I-40 west. A police scanner in his beaten up Subaru wagon popped up with occasional chatter. He heard talk of the motorcyclist being a preacher of some sort. He heard other things, some of which he didn’t want to, especially when they established that the driver of the SUV was his wife, though estranged wife was closer to the truth. It wasn’t an official legal status in Tennessee, but it was a reality. What he hadn’t heard was whether or not his kids were with her. She shouldn’t be driving, suffering from random blackouts doctors couldn’t explain, other than to say she didn’t have a tumor.

He cupped his hand near his face and exhaled, breath bouncing up into his nose. He found an old piece of gum on the dash and popped it into his mouth. He glanced around to make sure there weren’t any loose bottles in the car cab.

Steve parked the car and got out, his door scraping against the damp barrier. He could see the headline now: Ex-hero’s ex-porn queen wife kills minister on I-40.

An officer approached to shoo him away – another petty gawker come for the carnival – then backed up when she recognized him. He recognized her, Jeannine something. She didn’t wave, but nodded once.

The SUV was close to the dividing wall that separated the east- and west-bound lanes, but the vehicle had been eased far enough back to remove the body from the mangled motorcycle. Steve knew what the body looked like. He’d worked a similar accident once. Once was enough.

He ducked under the crime scene tape. The plodding traffic beside him began to pick up. One or two horns rang out. Gawkers were giving way to angry drivers.

“What the hell’s he doing here?” It was a detective.

In the growing darkness and flashing lights, Steve caught glimpses of his features. Older fellow. Probably retire in a few years. Old school. He was working the scene and making his wife wait in the car. He probably made her watch them remove the body. Figured he get her to talk and not want a lawyer present.

Jeannine spoke,” He’s the driver’s husband.”

“Arrest him.”

“Collins, he’s KPD.”

“Don’t care if he’s the second coming. Get him out!”

Steve made a move toward the SUV. Jeannine stepped in front of him. She was about five-ten, red hair, and little on the heavy side. She looked like she could hold her own and probably wouldn’t mind doing it.

Steve glimpsed Stephanie in the driver’s seat. She looked stolid, almost vacant. He could guess what she was thinking: Really, officer, this isn’t my world. I wouldn’t do something like that.

He stepped back and something crumpled under his tennis shoe, a shattered motorcycle part. Collins would probably want him arrested for tampering with evidence.

He glanced at Jeannine’s name plate above her shirt pocket. He could barely make it out: J. Kerres. He probably had the Jeannine part right.
“Jeannine, where are my daughters?” There were two: Megan and Emily, ten and five.

Before she could say anything, he heard yelling: shrill, piercing, accusing – all at the same time.

“You lying bastard.”

Stephanie charged around Jeannine.

“She came and took them away. Had some lawyer with her. Had some paper with her. Said I was an unfit mother. Said she would raise them. You told her where I was.”

Stephanie lunged at Steve, fingers curled into claws. He couldn’t step away without backing into traffic. He raised his arms to block her thrusts, but she knocked his sunglasses off. He had not told his mother where Stephanie was. At least he didn’t remember telling her.

Temporary flood lights clicked on and white light drenched the area. Steve glimpsed the full magnitude of the mangled bike and the blood smeared along the barrier wall. Like a gawker, he turned to get a fuller look when Stephanie landed a claw near his eye and raked it into his cheek, digging deeper as she dragged her nails downward.

Steve knocked her hand away and before he could stop, he hit her hard on the nose. He heard something crunch and saw Stephanie’s head recoil. She staggered backwards through the tape and fell into the next lane of traffic. She looked like a runner stumbling over the finish line the wrong way, arms flailing and knees giving way.

“Kerres!”

Steve heard Collins yell, knew it was not at him, and didn’t much care anyway. He reached down, grabbed Stephanie’s leg and dragged her back beside the SUV just as a car swooshed by.

Her nose was bent, blood on much of her face, and tears streamed out from her eyes. His shirt was wet with his own blood. He did what he could to help her.

At first she took his help, then she slapped his hands away, telling him to go to hell. Jeannine stepped in and did what she could until the paramedics arrived. Collins ordered her to go with them to the hospital. “And write down every damn thing she says.”

After the paramedics left, Collins, too, told him to go to hell. What was he, Stephen David York, doing contaminating his crime scene?

“It won’t make no difference, hero boy. Your wife killed a youth minister and she’s going down for it. She already told me she shouldn’t be driving, so she’s going down for it. Your hero status can’t do a damn thing for her.”

Steve saw the glowing hatred in Collins’ eyes and knew that for some cops you don’t rat out corrupt cops – up to and including the chief – even if it was the right thing to do, and because Steve had, his wife could now expect no leniency.

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June 24, 2012 · 5:11 pm

Writing a novel…

Writing a novel is …

Simple.

Deceptive.

Seductive.

And an Act of Defiance.

That’s why so many feel they can do it, and why so few do it successfully.

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March 11, 2012 · 12:10 am

The Kibitzer and The Kidd, part 6

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It wasn’t fair. Not only did he have a nickname he didn’t like – Kibbey – but he was also sleeping in the stable with the horses. Horse and hay, flatulence and flies, though it seemed odd that there were so many flies at night. He wondered if a fly got zapped by lightning, would it be resurrected.

Even the popcorn they delivered to him was stale and a little soggy from the humidity it picked up from the air. He had a bag of his own, but it had started raining again, so he couldn’t pop it outside. He looked around to see if the blacksmith’s workshop was part of the stables or nearby.

There was not a blacksmith’s forge, so he was on his own to create a fire.

He understood that the Kidd was the hero, having shot the pistol out of the floor-faced man’s hand. He knew that kibitzers were not easily or fully accepted into society. They were witnesses and scribes, and they reported to an authority most didn’t know about or understand. He certainly wasn’t sure why he had been selected. His family were not kibitzers. Nor any of his friends. And when they came in the middle of the night and told him he was selected, they did not give him a chance to say goodbye to his wife and two sons. Only a short note, quickly scribbled. It read: I’ve been selected. Don’t wait up.

He wasn’t sure how long ago that was, what his wife was like now, if his sons even remembered him.

The Kibitzer piled some hay in one area of mostly dirt. It was turning cold. He’d need the fire for more than popcorn.

Popcorn was his only solace. Bags of it turned up at the oddest times in the oddest places. He took it as a sign he was doing a good job.

He kept a book of matches dry and buried deep in a saddle bag. They were hard to get and he usually sparked a fire with a piece of flint and a piece of steel he carried; but they were both wet from rain. He was also too tired to try.

He added a piece of dried horse manure to the hay pile.

He found the matches, walked back to the pile of straw and dried other things and selected one from the box.

It was then somebody, head draped in a hood, stepped into the stable and tossed a torch on a larger pile of hay nearby. As the man left, he said, “Don’t wait up.”

At least that’s what the Kibitzer thought he said. The words were muffled by the hood. The words stunned him. By the time the Kibitzer recovered, the fire had spread to other parts of the stable, and the culprit was gone, and the Kibitzer was trapped.

(To be continued.)

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January 12, 2011 · 5:58 pm

So, you want to be a writer? Watch and learn

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September 9, 2010 · 7:54 pm

Pitch aside: dealing with contradictory information

This information comes from agent Nathan Bransford, and while he is aiming the information at query letters, I think the same advice can apply for pitches, with a little modification:

1. Take a Deep Breath: As long as you’re getting the big stuff right, you’re going to be fine. You don’t need to have every single little teeny tiny thing perfect. You can get my name or gender wrong and I still might request your pages (just did this last week in fact). I’m not going to reject you because you sent me the first five pages of Chapter 1 instead of your Prologue if I like the idea and your writing. Don’t sweat the small stuff. Because really: if an agent is going to reject your query over some small niggling detail, are they someone you’d want to work with anyway?

2. Remember That Agent Blogs Are Just Trying to Help: I know how tempting it is to throw up your hands and just think that literary agents are so many Goldilocks with completely different ideas of how hot the porridge should be. Please just remember that we offer so much advice because people ask. We get e-mails and comments all the time asking about everything from paper size to fonts to anglicized spelling to serial commas. So we try to help, and we’re not always going to agree on everything. Personally, when I’m wearing my author hat I’d rather have too much information than too little, so I tend to err on the side of dispensing too much agent advice. It’s up to you to decide which advice you agree with and which you don’t. Just remember that we’re trying to help, not trying to make your life miserable.

3. Not All Publishing Advice is Created Equal: I went back and looked at some of my early blog posts, and holy cow after just four years they’re already wildly out of date. Consider the source, consider the freshness of the advice, and beware of anyone who tries to tell you that there’s one way and only one way to find successful publication. Occasionally an author out there somewhere will have a sense that the way they found success is The Way That Should Work For Everyone, whereas people who have worked across the publishing spectrum have seen the proverbial cat skinned in an impossibly vast number of ways.

4. Try As Best You Can to Meet an Agent’s Specifications, But Don’t Go Crazy Trying to Do It: If you happen to remember that Rachelle wants you to query with your pen name and I want to hear from the real you: great! Query accordingly. But don’t go creating a massive spreadsheet with every agent’s particular individual preferences. No agent expects you to do that.

5. If You Think the Contradictory Query Advice is Mind Boggling, Just Wait Until You Reach the Publication Stage: In case you haven’t noticed, this business is an art, not so much a science. There’s no one way to do things, and you’re going to face conflicting advice and opinions about your manuscript, cover art, marketing plan, you name it. There are even more opinions out there than people (sometimes people can’t even decide what they think and have multiple opinions). At the end of the day, all you can do is just take all the advice into account, and choose the route that works best for you.

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September 8, 2010 · 10:11 pm

What makes a good pitch? The thou shalt nots

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In the last installment of our trip through pitch land, I listed a few things to consider that make for a good pitch. Here I will list a few things not to do.

1) Thou shalt not consider me an expert. I believe it was the author W. Somerset Maugham who said, “There are three rules for writing a good novel. Unfortunately, nobody knows what they are.” While I took most of my ideas for a good pitch from Michael Hauge’s book, even he admits there are other ways of constructing a pitch. You can certainly find suggestions by simply searching on the Internet, and some of them are very good. But all of them, in the end, revolve around the principle of “Be brief, be sincere, and be seated.” Or get out of your seat to make way for the next person who is going to pitch.

I know, I know. It is a pain, a real pain to take this 70,000-, 80,000-, 90,000-, or 100,000-word-or-more creation and squeeze the essence out of it. After all, if you could have said it less than 500 words, you would have. Right?

I empathize. I do. After all, I have a novel or two or three, and I went kicking and screaming into this idea of pitching. That’s part of the reason I say don’t consider me an expert. I’m not. And certainly, if you have a better way of doing it, stick with it. Maybe even let me know. In the meantime, I have to go kicking and screaming into this reality, much as I would rather spend time creating another one filled with people much more interesting than I am.

I will say in defense of pitches, I did get to meet some interesting agents, such as Cari Foulk, Jill Marr, and Amy Burckhart. And meeting them was a way to begin to get to know somebody who might wind up being my agent. After all (and this is a side note), I heard several times that having the wrong agent is worse than having no agent at all, and who might be the right agent for you might not be the right agent for me. But that is another subject.

2) Thou shalt not mention more than one character name in your pitch.

Tablet

Tablet with writings

And that should probably be your protagonist. You might be able to work in two names. But absolutely no more than that.

I know, I know, you probably agonized and researched, tried and retried names for your characters until you found the ones that were the best and no others would do. I am not disputing that the naming of characters is not important, and again, another subject for another time. But remember, you only have 5 minutes, and you are not the only person the agent or editor is going to be listening to. The agent or editor is not likely to remember more than one name anyway, and in all honesty, you probably want her or him to remember yours.

If the editor or agent wants to see some or all of your novel, that’s when he or she will get a chance to remember the character’s names, and that is when your skill in naming them can shine. In short, it’s okay to say “Jim Summer’s enemy…” or even say “his antagonist….”

3) Thou shalt not recount every plot and sub-plot, nor every plot point in your pitch. You may be the next Jeffrey Deaver, with the ability to handle a major plot and several strong sub-plots, and have them all have reversals or other surprise twists. But like having too many names, having too many plots and sub-plots in your pitch will only lead you into a thicket of inability. Stick to one plot, the main one, and stick to the two or three main features of that plot. If the agent or editor wants to know more, she or he will ask, and by her or his asking, you know they are at least mildly interested. Maybe more than mildly.

4) Thou shalt not say you are the next Jeffery Deaver or that your book is better than Jeffery Deaver’s latest. Even if either one or both of those statements is true, you gain nothing by it. Belittling somebody else to make yourself look more important was childish when you did it at ten and it hasn’t gotten any better since then. I will admit, I have read several accounts of accomplished writers who started writing after they read something so bad they threw the magazines or books across the rooms and proclaimed they could do better. Then they proceeded to do so, though most will admit they weren’t immediately or instantly better. It’s okay if something like that was your catalyst toward becoming a writer. But if you are truly better than X author, let your editor or agent find that out on his or her own. After all, there is no greater professional joy for an editor or agent than finding somebody he or she believes is the next Jeffery Deaver (or pick an author).

5) Thou shalt not say your novel is a sure best seller. It may be. I certainly hope so, but there are too many variables that go into making a best seller.

Being confident your novel and in yourself are good things. Often, late at night or early in morning, when you are struggling with the blank page, than confidence In your book or yourself may be the thing that pushes you through the retaining wall of doubt into a world that only you can imagine. But good writing is collaboration between you, the author, and the reader, where what you do ignites a passion in those who read your words and want to share in your world, and that includes agents and editors. Leave them a little room to discover your magnificence.

Next up: my pitches.

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September 1, 2010 · 7:51 pm

What makes for a good pitch? The thou shalts.

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By now you may (or maybe not) be wondering what makes for a good pitch to agents or editors when you approach them at conferences such as Killer Nashville.

1) Sincerity. Even with your nervousness, if you don’t believe in what you’ve written, don’t expect the agent or editor to. I once had a published author answer the question of how do you know when you’ve finished writing and editing a novel by saying, when you’re tired of looking at it. You may have reached that stage with the mechanics of your novel, but if you’ve also edited out the sincerity, then you’ve probably gone too far and it will show in your pitch.

man on books

Believe in what you've written

2) Passion. In his book, Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read by Michael Hauge, one of the things mentioned is passion, i.e. belief in your novel. If you don’t believe in it, nobody else will. Now, maybe you are like me, and when you are nervous, you can slip into talking in a flat, almost monotonous tone. At such times, an old-fashioned metronome has more passion in its back and forth swing than my voice does. It also happens when I am trying to remember to get everything in my pitch that I believe should be there and keep out the things I’ve decided shouldn’t be.

How do you overcome that? A friend of mine who was also pitching at Killer Nashville said he was going to add passion to his pitches by being sure to move his arms. Physical gestures can be effective in loosening you up to allow some of the passion to come through. After all, many passionate people are often moving their arms for emphasis. Another thing you can do is remember to breath and realize that while you don’t have a lot of time, you do have enough time if you’re prepared, if you’ve practiced your pitch. You may also want to practice varying the delivery pace of your sentences. Pause a little longer between some sentences than others. Think of what you’re doing more as a conversation.

3) Be prepared. That means having written out or in some other way constructed your pitch and have practiced it. A few of us who were going to Killer Nashville practiced our pitches. I facilitate a writing group. We meet once a month to review each others’ works. During part of a couple of those sessions, a few of us practiced pitches for the novels we had written, and we let the other members of the group offer their comments. Even after that, I practiced a few more times, often going through my pitch as I was driving to work. (I’m sure people the cars around me wondered what crazy song I was singing to or what medication I had failed to take that morning.)

I even practiced once with my wife, and once with the friend I rode over with to Killer Nashville. He did his pitch and I listened and offered comments. And I did mine. (Actually, I did two, because I had one for a second novel I have written.) Both my wife and my friend said I needed to convey a little more passion in my pitch. That’s when I asked my friend, “How are you going to convey passion in yours?”

“I’m going to wave my arms,” he said.

I did do some hand gestures with my pitches (all three of them), and I hoped it helped. Since there is no copyright on arm waving or hand gestures, I don’t think I owe him more than a thank you. As I said in an earlier post, I also admitted to my nervousness up front with the first agent. Sometimes it helps to make things a little easier to do that. And somehow our conversation lead to my getting to do a partial version of the pitch for my other novel as well as the one I had sat down to pitch.

4) Be prepared to be interrupted. The person on the other side of the table will probably have questions for you, particularly if she or he is interested. So be prepared for that. The questions may come at the end. If so, then you’ll have little or no interruptions. Or the questions may come during your pitch. I experienced both. If interrupted, you’ll have to do your best to remember where you were in your pitch and get back to it as naturally as possible.

5) The best pitches are not the longest ones. I had the times for my second and third pitches eaten into because the persons before me when a longer than the ten minutes allotted. If your pitch session is scheduled for 10 minutes, don’t have a pitch over five minutes in length. And if you can have one even shorter, probably better. Remember point number 4, be prepared to be interrupted. That interruption might even occur before you get to sit down.

The agents and editors are hearing these pitches back to back to back. Filling your presentation with wall to wall sound won’t necessarily make your book more memorable. If you’re done before your ten minutes is up, great. Even if the editor or agent doesn’t bite and want to see all or part of your manuscript, you could still leave a favorable impression by being polite and precise in your presentation. The editor or agent might not be interested in this novel, but who knows about the next one. Besides, if he or she didn’t want to read a sample of the novel, there is no need to waste your time or the agent’s or the editor’s. There could be a multitude of reasons why the editor or agent isn’t interested. For example, one agent my friend pitched to told him she wasn’t interest because her agency was already representing a book with a similar structure to it. Literary agencies and publishers generally don’t want to handle books that they believe are similar to ones they already have in hand. Unfortunately, there is not much you can do about that, other than move on.

I have written enough for now. Next time, a few “Thou Shalt Nots” in terms of pitches.

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August 29, 2010 · 9:28 pm

Agents (and editors) are like “a box of chocolates” …

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… ‘cause you “never know what you’re going to get.” And I’m sure the agents and editor’s who came to Killer Nashville to hear pitches probably felt the same way when authors sat down across from them to make their pitches.

Pitches, for those who may not be aware of them, are where the author becomes salesman (or saleswoman). It’s an oral query letter, delivered in person, by you — and on the other side of the small table with the too-long table cloth is the agent or editor.

This person, whom you may have researched and read about, taken notes and taken the time to find out if he or she is on Facebook or LinkedIn is rarely going to match up with what you’ve gleaned, at least for the five to ten minutes you have to pitch to them. The World Wide Web makes products of us all and the flesh and blood, breathing and gleaning version now across the table from you, waiting on you to try to entice her or him is not going to match up. Similarly, you will feel that your pitch is not going to match up with your novel, your pride and joy that you’ve written and rewritten and rewritten again, cursed at and crumpled up papers over for months, if not years. From the moment you sit down, you are in a Twilight Zone where the pieces of reality don’t quite fit.

I guess you could pay somebody to pitch for you, or beg your best friend or a family member to do, but this ringer is probably not going to know the book as well as you, and you have to know it, to be prepared to answer questions beyond your oral presentation. And if an agent or editor is interested, there will probably be questions. For example, I was asked, “How many words is you novel?” “Have you had it critiqued by a critique group?” “Have you written anything else?” “Have you approached any other agents or editors with this novel?”Having written more than the novel you are pitching shows you are serious about writing. Having a critique group look at it is a sign that you are willing to take criticism and possibly willing to make changes in response to it.

First hard fact to deal with: a pitch is where your novel – your magical, wondrous world created out of imagination and toil, and conjured up with mysterious black marks on a white page – becomes a “product.”

And in case you’re wondering, I recoil at writing the above sentence. But the fact is, publishing is a business, and even more so today than ever before. As the community services manager for Barnes and Noble said during one of the panels at Killer Nashville, “Over 200,000 titles are published each year, and we only have space in our store for about 100,000 titles.” And not all that space is available for new books. There are some standards and classics they carry. The owner and manager of Mysteries and More, an independent bookstore of 1,000 sq. ft. in Nashville has even less space for books, recently published or not.

Second hard fact to deal with: You have 10 minutes or less to sell (pitch) your “product” to an agent or editor, and what you are hoping for is that the agent or editor will want to see the manuscript or some part of it.

Sometimes you have less than 10 minutes. For example, if the guy before you gobbled up more than his allotted time and the monitor had to go pry him out of the chair across the table from the agent you’re scheduled to pitch to. There are several key elements that make up a good pitch, which I may go into in another entry, but for now, I will recommend this book: Selling Your Story in 60 Seconds: The Guaranteed Way to Get Your Screenplay or Novel Read by Michael Hauge.

The idea of the pitch comes from Hollywood where pitches are used to sell screenplays to producers and directors. There are even pitch festivals, where you can pay to go inside and pitch you screenplay to one or many people who can make the screenplay a screen presentation. Pitches are writing conferences are usually free, assuming you have paid to enter the conference.

I signed up to pitch to three agents. My times were back to back to back, as were most other people’s who had multiple pitches. So, dry mouth, parched lips (It’s amazing how quickly my lips can dry out.), and clumsy-footed, I gracelessly stepped into the room. There were six small tables, three on each side of the room. Each table was the same small round table with the too, too long ivory table cloth draped over it. And, of course, the first agent I was assigned to pitch to was in the back of the room. Plenty of opportunity to pratfall before reaching my destination.

Third hard fact to deal with: Asking to see some part or all of your wondrous world created with mysterious black marks on white paper is not a promise to represent it or publish it. It is not even a promise to like it.

Now, that doesn’t mean the agent or editor does not want to like your novel. They have come to conferences like Killer Nashville in search of the next novel or novels they can fall in love with and want to represent or publish. They want to be taken away to wondrous worlds by way of the mysterious black marks on white paper. I’ll even include in that the one agent who said on a panel that when he receives a query letter (a written pitch), he looks for a reason to say no, but that is simply because he says he receives so many of them. Still, he was at this conference and he was taking pitches, so even he was looking for the magic that only a novel good novel can bring.

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July 5, 2010 · 12:47 pm

The Painted Beast

There once was an ex-cop who did poorly
At being a father and what’s more he
Killed his ex-wife
But then offered up his life
To save his daughter from a life in pornography.

[Editor’s note: this is a distillation of my novel The Painted Beast into a short limerick form. It does not capture all the twists and turns of the novel, but if I had to describe at least one main feature of it in 50 words or less, this would probably do.]

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