Bio Blog Books Classroom Appearances Contact R.C. Lewis

publishing

A Touch of Good News

A few good things that have happened lately:

Otherwise, I’m still in the agent hunt, still working on Book #3, and jotting down some pre-writing notes for a brand-spanking-new idea.

I’m also counting the weeks until Thanksgiving break.  For the record, it’s at five.

 

Speak up:

Comments Off on A Touch of Good News

Playing with Covers: Part Two

Because I don’t have enough to do (?), I started playing around with Photoshop on Thursday night.  Here’s the result:

ETA: Went ahead and made a matching one for Echoes, too.

These just might be my favorites so far.  See the previous versions (fronts only) here.

I still haven’t decided to self-publish, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, right?

Speak up:

3 comments

That Aristotle Guy

Oops, kind of a long stretch since the last post.  At first, there wasn’t much to say.  Then there was, but it was more of the same (four fulls and a partial out at one point = more waiting).  Finally, it was getting back to the day job, where almost everyone on campus had to relocate due to renovations.

The inspiration for today’s post comes from the day job, in fact.  We had a professional development day yesterday, most of which wouldn’t interest any of you.  During a presentation on critical thinking skills, though, came a moment of epiphany … and it wasn’t while my colleagues and I were trying to build a tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks.

Our presenter includes some quotations on a few of her slides, and one particularly caught my attention:

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
-Aristotle

In addition to the implications for educating my little rabblerousers, it struck me as a nice summation of my philosophy on accepting critique.  You have to be able to entertain a thought, even unpleasant ones, without (necessarily) accepting it.  Once you entertain it, you can make that decision whether it has merit you should act on or not.

This is especially applicable to me recently, as three of my four fulls came back with rejections.  One was a form rejection, so there’s nothing for me to take from it.  Another was a detailed message that felt like the agent just didn’t get it–we all view things through our own lens, and hers seems to be polarized at a right angle to mine.  The third was a brief but personal message that raised an interesting question.

It’s that last one that has me thinking the most.  Perhaps I’ll expound on it in another post.  My book doesn’t follow a certain part of the YA sci-fi/fantasy formula.  I know that, and in many ways it was my whole point.  So I’m trying to entertain the thought planted by that agent without accepting it, at the same time looking for what I can take from it.

Meanwhile, I’m forging ahead–working on Book Three, receiving good news on another front (see if you can spot it in my Twitter feed, post forthcoming), and wondering if I’m ever going to hear back from Agent #1.

Oh, and keeping up with the day job.

  

Speak up:

Comments Off on That Aristotle Guy

While Waiting: Part 2

A few months ago, I posted a list of things to do while waiting on an agent.  Agent #1 still has the full, and now two more agents have it as well.  (My latest attempt at a query letter actually has legs!)  So, more waiting.  Here’s what I have gotten/am getting done, and it’s nice to see some of these are progressions from the first list.

A lot of that looks like work.  Here are some additions for the To Do list:

Hmm, all of that involves travel and interacting with humans outside of cyberspace.  That might be a clue.

Anyone else have fun ways of keeping your mind off the waiting game?

Speak up:

2 comments

Playing with Covers

My siblings are graphically gifted, so when I needed a cover image for Authonomy, I turned to my sister.  After I finished the sequel, she decided to go a different direction for Fingerprints to mesh better with her take on Echoes.  We still have some thoughts about tweaking things.  Enjoy.

Original Fingerprints Cover
New Fingerprints Cover

Echoes Cover

Speak up:

2 comments

The Query Quandary

Mention queries, and writers of all ages sprout a few more gray hairs.  The first rule of #AskAgent chats on Twitter is No Query Questions.  I haven’t yet come across a writer who looks forward to writing one or an agent who adores slogging through hundreds of them to find a few gems.  (If you’re out there, give a shout.)  [EDIT: Cat likes writing them, just not sending them.  So there’s at least one out there.]

No one (or almost) really likes them, but I get why they fall under the “necessary evil” category.  And it’s not like there aren’t resources out there to help – enough blogs to overload anyone’s browser, for starters.

Even with all that help, we struggle.  After doing my best to help critique several queries on AgentQuery Connect and overhauling my own query for the umpteenth time, I thought about what makes it so difficult.  Boiling a novel-length plot down to a couple hundred words isn’t easy, obviously.  But what – above all else – stands in the way?

They say the devil’s in the details.  I contend that the devil’s in determining the depth of the details.  (How’s that for alliteration?)

Boil down the plot too much, and you get something like this:

An orphan boy discovers he has unexpected power and is the Chosen One who must battle ultimate Evil.

Could be Harry Potter.  Or Star Wars.  Or possibly dozens of other fantasy works.

More often, though, I think we tend to go to the opposite extreme, thinking every nuance of the story is essential if the agent or editor is to understand the plot.  Try this (exaggerated) example:

Milton Dauntless, a shy thirteen-year-old boy with a faithful Chihuahua-Corgi mix named Gargantuar, discovers his parents, Darwina and Ted, weren’t killed in the famous So-So Steakhouse food poisoning scandal of ’99 as he’d been told all his life by Grandma Gertie.  In fact, his father was killed by the evil vampire lord Vladindeath, who has secretly ruled the underworld ever since defeating the werewolf clans seven hundred fifty-two years ago.  As the sole survivor of the powerful Dauntless clan, Milton must now learn to harness the power of the Crystal of Purity, find out what happened to his mother when she escaped the bloodbath of her husband’s murder with her long-lost brother Sherman, and defeat the vampires once and for all.

(Okay, that was kind of fun.)

That one is obviously bogged down in excess detail, including irrelevant backstory and too many names.  (See my earlier musing on the issue of Name Soup.)

Here are some of my conclusions, and I hope others will add to them.

Get Enough Detail

Don’t Overdo the Detail

It’s a thin line to walk between too much and too little.  No wonder so many of us find it so difficult.

Do you have any pointers for finding that perfect balance?

~R.C.

Speak up:

11 comments