ABNA Quarterfinals

Yes, I made the cut.  Look, here’s proof.  So far I’ve only seen a summary of the “overall impressions” bit of the second round reviews (the full reviews should be available on CreateSpace soon, I hear), but those summaries look pretty good:

Review #1  This is truly unlike much of what I’ve been reading; two complete, interesting characters, set in an interesting setting, offers so many possibilities of what can happen. I am drawn to the uniqueness and novelty of the story, and feel that it is in great hands!

Review #2  Of the excerpts I’ve read thus far, this is the book I’d be most likely to continue reading. The school setting resonates with young adults, as well as the varied peer interactions. The dialog sounds genuine for the age group, and the main character doesn’t display any preternatural wisdom beyond her years. The author has given Lareina a sly sense of humor and a natural, though not cloying, sensitivity to others. I’d be happy to spend more time in her company in this book.

The first day after the quarterfinal excerpts were posted was funny.  Apparently, I have enough tech-savvy friends (especially fellow writers) that my excerpt got downloaded several times right away.  This led to shooting up the Kindle Bestseller chart, topping out at #17.  That, in turn, led to some poor souls downloading the excerpt to their Kindle and wondering where the rest of the book was.  (I take the fact that they wanted to continue reading to be a very good sign.)

So I’m adding another item to my Things to Do While Waiting on an Agent list: reading the other 249 excerpts in the YA category.  I’ve already done eighteen (took notes, but haven’t posted reviews for all of them yet).  Not a bad start.  I should be finished by April 27th, when the semifinalists are announced, right?

I just hope all the reading keeps me from thinking too much about the fact that a reviewer from Publishers Weekly is reading my full manuscript.

Keeping Busy

Progress!  I have written another short story.  I won’t be posting it here, because I have hopes of submitting it to a few places.  (Imagine if it got accepted – I’d have a publishing credit.  How snazzy!)  Just under 4000 words, so about four times as long as the first attempt.  The first was just a fun little exercise to see what happened if I tried.  This one I took more seriously.  If anyone’s willing to offer some feedback, drop me a line.

I’ve also gotten back to the sequel for Fingerprints.  Wrote several pages, knowing that I was likely to cut most of one scene.  I had to write it to get things rolling again, but as a scene, it wasn’t going anywhere.  SNIP!  I hope I can keep pushing forward on it.  It feels like it’s a third of the way (or maybe halfway) through, so I’m curious how long it’ll end up.

Meanwhile, the day job has plenty going on as well.  State testing this week, which I have to miss my morning classes to administer every day except Thursday.  Seven of my students (including my entire Pre-Calculus class) will be leaving for Europe Tuesday afternoon and will miss the rest of this week and next.  Oh, and I’ve been procrastinating a final project for my professional development class.

All this has helped a great deal in keeping my mind off the next round of cuts for ABNA (happening Tuesday) and the full I have out to an agent.  I prefer stressing about things I have some (if little) control over.

While Waiting

I got my first request for a full on Friday (prompting a weekend-long happy-dance).  While it’s not out on an exclusive basis, I have various reasons for waiting a bit before querying further.  Thus, I find it’s time to make a list:

Things to Do While Waiting on an Agent

1. Work on the sequel  (I know, I know … sell the first one first.)
2. Try hand at short stories  (First attempt seen here, more “sincere” attempt underway.)
3. Reorganize a closet or two  (or three …)
4. Do stuff for the day job  (Should this be higher on the list?)
5. Consider learning another language  (ASL? Check. French? Semi-check. Spanish, which would be particularly useful? D’oh!)
6. Watch episodes of Mythbusters and Dirty Jobs  (Am I the only one waiting for these two shows to collide?)
7. Back I’ve Been Deader  (Hey, where’d that come from?!)
8. Reconsider languages  (I wanna learn Welsh … but why?)
9. Ponder what would happen if Roombas became self-aware  (I mean, really, think about it.)
10. Read “real” books  (Got a stack of seven waiting for me.)

There’s my first ten.  What do you do while waiting for an agent’s response?

There Are No Rules

Okay, maybe there are rules of writing.  But not as many as you think, and very few without exceptions.  Everything else could be labeled suggestions, guidelines, or generally good ideas.

If you write a novel completely in Yoda-speak, that probably won’t fly.  Can I unilaterally declare a rule against that?

So, let’s look at the so-called rules.

1. Prologues are prohibited.  I’ve seen many bad prologues – unnecessary, gimmicky, long-winded … it goes on.  Some prologues, however, are dynamite and serve a particular function.  For a much more qualified opinion on the subject, check out this blog post.
2. Avoid adverbs/adjectives.  In my cyber-travels, here’s what I’ve learned: It depends.  Awkward and pervasive modifiers are a problem.  Piling as many as four adjectives in front of a single object bugs me.  Audience matters, too.  Middle Grade and Young Adult are likely to have more of these words, and particular genres favor them more than others.  And let’s face it – sometimes they’re the best way to get the message across.
3. “Pass” on passive voice.  Constant use of passive voice would annoy me.  Even more annoying, though, is when people misidentify something as passive.  The presence of a “to be” verb form doesn’t automatically mean it’s passive.  Besides, I’ve found sometimes I want the passive form to change where the emphasis is placed.
4. Say only said.  Dialogue tags are a big issue.  Too many kill the flow.  Too few can cause confusion.  Then there’s the question of what the tag should be.  Again, I contend audience and genre are something to consider.  I stick to “said” unless I have a reason not to (so I follow the “rule” except when I don’t).  I’ve also found when there are more than two speakers, more tags are naturally needed.  In that situation, “said” starts to feel really repetitive.

 I’m sure there are others, and further comments to make on the ones I’ve already listed.

Does it have to be this complicated, though?  Rather than obsessing over “rules” and how to follow them/when to break them, I ask myself the following questions:

• Will the reader spend more time unraveling the sentence than it takes to read it?
• Is anything distracting or jarring?
• Is anything ambiguous or confusing?
• Will the reader look at this section and say, “So what?”

Any questions to add to this list?  What are your self-critiquing tips and tricks?

Short Story: Assumptions

I think this is the first short story I’ve ever written.  (Anything I did in English classes has been forgotten.)  Felt like I should try it.  Super-short, may qualify as flash for all I know.  Enjoy!

* * * * *

Assumptions
by R.C. Lewis

Gunfights and car chases, that’s what I needed.  Maybe some gratuitous, reality-defying explosions, too, if I was lucky.  The more action, the better.

I’d like to say it had been a good day until I arrived at the movie theater.  Until the sneering minimum-wage teenager asked if I meant diet when I clearly asked for a regular soda.  I’d like to say the day to that point had been a shining example of why it’s wonderful to be alive.  But that would be a lie.

The implications of the greasy-haired adolescent didn’t help, though.

My usual seat, third row up from center, ensured maximal viewing pleasure, taking in the whole screen at once.  This showing was popular, but not quite sold out.  As the theater filled, the seats to either side of me remained vacant.  Surely someone would be joining me, right?  Or maybe they worried Crazy-Lady-Who-Goes-to-Movies-Alone Syndrome was contagious.

Speaking of which, was that …?  It was.  A blind date from three months ago walked in with two friends, laughing about some recent sporting event.  Big upset in the college rankings.

I instantly thought of those crime dramas, when the cops make the arrest and the guy shouts, “It’s a set-up!”  I knew how that guy felt, because blind dates were the same thing – set-ups.  Friends said they were doing it because they cared, because they were certain the guy was just right for me.

Invariably, the dates ended with me alone in my apartment, resisting the urge to scream, “I’ve been framed!”

I prayed the latest accomplice wouldn’t look my way.  He’d tried to enlist himself among the few repeat offenders by calling a week later.  Since I couldn’t recall his name now, the results of that phone call were obvious.

Not that he wasn’t good-looking.  Far from it.  If I had a type, he was it, but only as far as appearance.  I think he lost me when he spent most of our date detailing how he was God’s gift to the philosophy department at the local university.  I would have enjoyed a nice discussion about any of the topics he mentioned, but he was too busy convincing me everyone else was wrong to hear anything I had to say.

It was still an improvement over the set-up prior, who clearly hadn’t expected me to be educated and reasonably intelligent.  Maybe I could blame my accent for that one, but it had almost disappeared in the past few years.  No great loss, though; the friend who’d done the framing later told me he’d gotten back with his ex.

Mr. Neo-Nietzsche remained too occupied with the failings of basketball referees to notice me, so I relaxed.  The previews started, and I got my promised violence and mayhem.  Plenty of explosions, too.  I particularly enjoyed one involving a propane tank and a mime.  You had to be there.

The credits rolled as everyone filed out around me, but I stayed put.  An odd habit, maybe, but I always stayed until the end of the credits.  I had this image of the poor gaffers and score wranglers and every soul in the second unit who went utterly unknown.  They worked hard and didn’t rake in the obscene paychecks for it, so the least I could do was remain in my seat as their names scrolled across the screen – their singular moment of glory.

A bonus was seeing the song credits near the end.  Yes, that was Incubus.  Thought the voice sounded familiar.

When the lights came up and the cleaning crew rolled in, I was the only one left.  More teenagers, but the aggravating soft drink vendor wasn’t among them.  They were polite as I passed, and I offered a smile, not envying their task of sweeping popcorn and scraping smashed Milk Duds from the floor.

Out in the lobby, I looked at my watch – too late to think about cooking dinner.  My favorite bistro was on the way home, so I stopped there.  Not especially swank, but nice and cozy.

I glanced briefly at the menu before ordering one of my favorites.  The waitress was new – not one of the girls who knew me as a regular – but she was friendly and pleasant.  She brought my raspberry lemonade with a smile and left me in peace.

If any disease was more dreaded than the single woman at the movies, it was the woman sitting at a table for one in a restaurant.  I felt the glances of a few other diners, but it wasn’t my first time.  The way to avoid scrutiny was to look busy, so I pulled my notepad from my purse.

When the waitress brought my food a few minutes later, I noticed something more than a glance.  A few tables away, a male diner – also solo – caught my eye.  Tall, dark hair … my usual suspects for distraction, he had them all.  Before I could feel self-conscious about staring, he winked and went back to reading a novel.  Crime thriller, but one of the better authors in the genre.

Throughout my meal, I compulsively glanced his way.  He caught me looking a few times, but I also caught him.  The little thrill when he smiled at me … how long since I’d last felt that?

Dinner couldn’t last forever, though, and soon the waitress brought me my check.  When she looked at my credit card, though, her eyes widened.

“You’re her, aren’t you?  The romance writer!  I have all your books.  Oh, and wow, today must be your favorite day of the year, huh?”

Under ordinary circumstances, I would have rolled my eyes at such an idea.  Today, though … today I looked toward the mystery man across the way and smiled.

“Sure,” I answered.  “Who doesn’t love Valentines Day?”

Just for Giggles: Character Transplant Exercise

In a fit of randomness, I started thinking about my characters and how they would fit into the real world.  Maybe other writers (especially of fantasy) do this all the time.  It’s kind of fun, and has made me think about my characters in-depth, particularly the more minor characters.

I wonder how much you can tell about my book from reading this silliness cold.  Hmm …

Raina would front a rock band, drawing comparisons to Paramore’s Hayley Williams, except Raina would mouth off to the press more than she should.  There would be a rumor about the paparazzi and electrocution, which sensible people would shrug off.

Taz would make major breakthroughs in computer science and linguistic programming, specifically in the development of signing avatars.  She’d be a guest lecturer all over the world, and her company would be puzzled over why she never asked to be reimbursed for her airline tickets.

Niko would take online courses in philosophy while hanging out with Raina on tour, driving his professors to madness with his ability to beat them in any argument.  He’d turn down the opportunity to go to top medical schools and become a writer instead.

Vota would be a MythBuster.  She loves blowing stuff up, so she’d fit right in.

Genno would be a negotiator, but not in any kind of business sense.  Probably law enforcement, hostage negotiation, that kind of thing.  His co-workers would think of him as the nice guy, kind of quiet, but they’d also know not to mess with him.

Willet would be a contestant on Survivor.  He’d be the guy who tries to win by flirting with all the girls.  There would be nasty fights during and after tribal council, claiming that using his shapeshifting to impersonate other tribe members constituted cheating.

Pashti would be a student at the Art Institute of Chicago (sculpture, mostly).  By all appearances, she’d be sophisticated and avant-garde, but secretly she’d spend her Thursdays watching Survivor, rooting for Willet.  (She’d never tell him, though.)

Anyone else ever tried something like this?  Other favorite character exercises?  Feel free to post links in the comments.