Bookstore Day!

I'm off to my quarterly book-shopping trip.  I haven't bought books in a while, so here's hoping I don't spend too much and that I find everything I've been dying to read.

Here's my general shopping list:

Trick of the Light - Rob Thurman
My Soul to Keep - Rachel Vincent
All Fired Up - Kristen Painter (yeah, it probably won't be at Borders, but I can hope)
Monster War - Dean Lorey
Sparks - Laura Bickle
Last Dragon Standing - GA Aiken
An Artificial Night - Seanan McGuire
Alpha - Rachel Vincent

And from the Backlist Dept.:

Deathwish & Roadkill - Rob Thurman (Books 4 & 5 of his Cal Leandros series)
The Next Bullet Catcher novel  by Roxanne St. Claire (except I can't remember if I'm on #3 or #4)

I'll let you know how I fared when I get home.  Wish me luck.  =o)

(Funny, I didn't realize until now everything on my list is in the middle of a series - except for Kristen's book.  When did I become a series reader?  Are you a series reader?)

ETA: Strikethoughs are books I didn't get either because Borders didn't have, or in the case of Roxanne St. Claire, I realized I'd read them all.  I did get one book not on the list - Cold Sight: Extrasensory Agents by Leslie Parrish.  She's totally new to me, so we'll see how that goes.

Bought any new books lately? 

BTW, that Mt. Olympus burger thing at Red Robin is to die for with chicken instead of beef.  Yum.

Wee Hours Wanderings

Hi there.  It's 1:23 local time and I'm awake.  Stupid leftover pizza is killing me.

Anyway, after having been disappeared all day, Max just happened to be outside when I got up.  (I think that's another reason why I couldn't sleep.  Silly me, worried about my silly wandering cat.)  He's home and he's hungry.  Big surprise there.  Sucked down an entire can of food he's not particularly fond of.  Maybe that's the trick - feed him the less favorite food in the middle of the night.  :shrug:  One would think a cat who was starving only a few short months ago wouldn't be so damn picky.  So, he ate and then went right into his new box without so much as a thank you.  Sheesh.

Thing two...  Or was that three?  My daughter started her year of student driving almost a year ago.  I finally added up the hours thinking we were so close.  OMG, we're only about half.  Fifty hours is a lot more than it feels like.  This, of course, means we're doing a lot more driving to catch up so she doesn't get her license too late.  Bleh.

Speaking of student driving time, we were out for a couple hours this morning, and I took this picture while she drove.  Not bad considering she didn't stop the car.

Okay.  It's been almost two hours since I got up and I think it's safe to go back to bed.  I hope you're all sleeping well.  And if I still can't sleep, there's always editing to do. 

;o)

Picture Pause - Storm Front

Personalization: How Necessary is it really?

As I've been sitting here, working on my query letter, I was thinking about the personalization part and wondering just how important it really is.

If you follow Janet Reid's QueryShark blog, every time someone puts a bit in about how they chose her as an agent, she snips it out.  She knows who she represents.  She knows what she represents.  She expects people querying her have already done their research and wouldn't be querying her unless they met her needs.

But you always hear about how important it is to put that personalization in there.

Right now, my query sits at 219 words (subject to change) - most of which is the story.  I've got a line with the word count, title and genre.  I don't have anything about me, because... well let's face it, I have no creds to put in a query letter.  That leaves roughly 31 words to talk about why I chose the agent.

Ummm, after 6 years, I don't remember what in particular made me chose the agents I have on my short list.  Mostly it's their blogs, or some interview I read years ago that I couldn't find again if I tried.  I've queried Jessica Faust because, well, she's Jessica Faust.  She's always been pleasant in her communications, I like her blog and even when she's rejected me, she's been super-professional.  (And it doesn't hurt that she asked me to query her with future projects.)  But Jennifer Jackson.  Well, I query her because she's like Jim Butcher's agent and a rock star.  If she can do for me what she's done for him, I'll be in writerly nirvana.

I guess what it boils down to is falling back on the old maxim: Tailor your query to meet each agent's wants.  They want the personal touch, give it to them.  If not, don't.

What do you think?  How personal are your queries?

The Editing Collage

Editing.  Is it just me or does it sometimes feel like making a collage?  You snip bits from here and there to make a whole picture.  Sometimes you toss the bits aside, never to be used again.  Other times those bits you snipped are just right for adding back in later. 

That's where I'm at with Djinnocide.  I thought I was done.  Then I looked at it again with a careful - and objective, I hope - eye to what a fresh reader might see when they crack the book.  Low and behold, the whole beginning was stilted and choppy.  Snip, snip, snip.  Add in little pieces of what was snipped.  Voila!  The prologue or preface or whatever that was, is gone.  Bits of it are now woven into the whole.  Chapter One is now as perfect as the following chapters.  Yay me.

Anyway, I'm doing one final pass over the whole thing to make sure everything is as cohesive as I thought it was several weeks ago, and then this puppy is going out into Queryland.  I'm excited.  I'm also a bit barfy about the whole idea.  But them's the breaks.

Does editing feel like making a collage to you?  Or is your editing more like photoshopping a picture?  Personally, I'm usually in the photoshop camp, but right now, it's more like a collage. 

Banned Books and Irony

Laura Griffin has a great post today talking about Banned Books Week and as I was sliding down the ALA list of the Top 100 Banned/Challenged Books, I was struck again by how stupid the idea of banning books is.

If I remember correctly, this is the United States of America.  Right?  I get to pick what I read - not some inbred yahoo and his sister-wife, not some supposed man of god, not some backwoods clem, and sure as hell not some uptight pretentious twat.  I choose what goes in my head.  I monitor what goes in my child's head.  I don't need anyone telling me what I can't read or what I'm not allowed to show my daughter.   Feh. 

Looking over the ALA list, there are a lot of books on there I don't want to read, and several I'd rather my daughter wouldn't.  Hell, there are even a couple I'd really rather no one read because I think they're that detrimental to mankind as a whole, but those are my opinions and I would never presume to force anyone to adhere to my beliefs.  I wish I could say the same about other people, but I can't.  There will always be people out there who feel the need to try and force others to believe what they believe and think what they think.  And unless someone stands up to those people.... Well, welcome to the communist Russia (or Cuba, or China) that our beautiful country will become.

:deep breath in through the nose out through the mouth:

And now that I'm done with my rant, is it just me or does anyone else see the irony in the fact that some idiot somewhere wants to ban (or has banned) Fahrenheit 451??  I guess they figure if they ban the book about burning books, people will be less likely to notice what they're doing.

(Yes, yes, I know.  Bradbury didn't intend Fahrenheit 451 do be about censorship per se, but this irony is so delicious, I don't think Mr. Bradbury would've minded the reference.)

A Dozen Doors - Which One is Right

At the beginning of a story, I'm usually pretty good at picking the first path.  I know without a doubt which way to head into the maze that is a new book.  I don't usually get lost until the first crossroads, and then the real fun begins.  This time, though, I'm stumped as to where exactly I should begin this new manuscript.  Standing at the starting point is so much easier when you have one door to enter.  This new story has so many ways it could begin and so many points I could focus on first, that it's like standing in  front of a dozen doors.  And I'm damned if I can tell which one is right.

About a year ago, I opened one of the doors and strolled down the path for a little ways.  I knew where I was going, but the path felt wrong.  I tried another door and immediately got lost.  I've picked a new door, and the path ahead feels right, but after so many miscues, I'm doubting my ability to find the trail this time out.

The last time out - when I began DLN - I obviously picked the wrong trail.  I got all the way to end before I realized I didn't actually make it to the right destination.  This lead to me starting all over and doing it again - and getting it wrong again.  I hit the right path on the third try, but I'm a little hestitant to go through the three tries again.  I don't want to do all that extra work.  I mean, I will if I have to, but it was so much easier when I knew which door to pick on the first try.

Anyway, I've got my water bottle and my compass.  I've started along this new path and so far, it's feeling right.  I might make a few missteps along the way, but that's par for this obstacle course.  Wish me luck.  And if I get totally lost, someone send a search party.  ;o)

Does this happen to you?  How do you know when you've started your story at the right place?  And how do you determine what's the right path for your manuscript to take?