"Runaways" - new verse novel

I've missed posting this month because I've been writing - around 30,000 words of a new SF novel for my Hamline creative thesis, plus a new project for Penguin. But now I'm taking a little time out to celebrate the release of my new verse novel, Runaways.

Jack and Cassie are brother and sister, and when Dad turns up and takes Jack away "on holiday", Cassie is not convinced. But Jack is a difficult kid and Mum doesn't seem bothered that he's gone.

But Jack is a long way away, with a dad who gets a better offer, so Jack takes to the road. He knows where he's going - he's following a story Cassie used to tell him. But is she brave enough to join him?

And can you ever really run away? Or does it just make things worse?

Here's an excerpt:

CASSIE

three years since

we’ve seen Dad

and suddenly he’s back

flashing fifty dollar notes

buying Mum perfume

calling us his little buddies

I’m not so little anymore

I know a fake

when I see one

even if Jack doesn’t

that’s what happens

when you’re younger

you believe anything.

*

Jack wears a grin

from ear to ear

Dad takes him

to the cricket

to the pub

calls him ‘little mate’

Jack soaks it up

but when Dad gives him

fifty dollars

just like that

he gives it to me

worried

that Mum will be angry

she doesn’t say a thing

I hide it anyway

for Jack’s birthday

Jack gets more from Dad

in a day

than Mum gives him

in a year

but it’s totally suss

I know it is

but I stay silent.

 

JACK

out on the highway

trees and trucks whiz past

zzzooom!          zzzooom!

are we there yet?

are we there yet?

no, but

after a while

I feel sick

not car sick but

lonely sick

for Cassie  

and I can’t say anything

because Dad’s hands

are really tight on the wheel

like Mum’s.

*

we drive and drive and drive

nights and days

like we’re never gonna stop

I’m too hot to jiggle

                        I’m a fried zombie

Dad squints behind

his dark stingray glasses

yells at truck drivers

never wants to stop

even when I have to pee

‘hurry up,’ he says

while I freak out

behind a bush

it’s scary

the dark

wants to suck me in

like a black hole. 

*

I ask Dad where we’re going

‘you said the beach’

no answer

I ask again

where we’re going

‘what about school?’

no answer

I ask again

‘where are we going?’

I get a whack that

makes my ears ring.

Runaways is available now - $14.95!

Are you unhappy with your agent?

I’ve been thinking about this as the result of several comments by different people in the past few days – some on blogs and some in person – and wondering why. After all, getting an agent, we’re told, is the key to being published and successful these days. (If you disagree, great, but that’s not what this is about.) In the US, the standard perception is that if you don’t have an agent, particularly in the area of adult fiction, you have very little hope of getting your book in front of an editor.

How to get an agent is the focus of many articles. I even wrote one myself after interviewing two agents at a conference. A lot of agents, such as Janet Reid and Kristin Nelson, have blogs where they give a truckload of advice on how to be professional and get an agent, and what an agent will do for you. But lots of writers are saying, behind closed doors where no one can hear them (or out loud when they want to complain to the world), that they are unhappy with their agent.

And all the writers who don’t have an agent yet wish they’d be grateful they’ve got one at all and shut up.

Why the complaints? I suspect it’s for one of the following reasons:

·       *   The agent was new or starting out when they signed on, and now the agent is really busy and doesn’t have the same amount of time to spend on each writer anymore. Or that early enthusiasm and determination the agent had has been worn away by the ups and downs of the traditional publishing world. 

·      *   The writer thought they’d be getting a combined cheer squad/friend/supporter/partner and their agent believes it’s a business and the writer needs to find that stuff elsewhere.

·   *      The writer thought their agent, who genuinely loved their book, would sell it in a flash for big dollars, and the agent either hasn’t been able to sell it to anyone, or for a much lower advance than hoped for.

·   *      The writer didn’t get any of the “dream” agents he/she was hoping for, but they got this agent (who was better than no agent, right?), and now they’re thinking it was a bad move. Why? For any or all of the reasons above. Most agents only take on books and writers whose work they love, but sometimes it doesn’t happen the way either of them hoped.

· *        The writer didn’t really investigate well enough how this agent operates. Some agents work on your manuscript with you (often they’ve been editors before), some expect you to give them perfection, more or less, that they can sell. Some agents see it completely as a business, and you make appointments like everyone else if you want to talk, and some agents are much more about career-building with some hand-holding added in. The spectrum of how an agent likes to work with clients is vast. Writers need to know this stuff.

Over the years, I’ve realized that many writers have no real idea of what agents do, or are supposed to do, for the percentage they earn. They also don’t know or accept that a bad agent, or an agent unsuited to the relationship they want or need, is worse than no agent at all. Once you have an agent, you can’t keep sending your own novels out, and the agent probably won’t want you self-publishing willy-nilly either. It is a business relationship. Yes, you make money and then your agent makes money. A good agent will want to make you lots of money, for obvious reasons. They may not want you calling them every week for an encouraging pep talk when you have writer’s block. Or maybe they’ll be OK with that. But you have to know that upfront or you’ll be disappointed.

There are plenty of ways to find this stuff out. All over the net are interviews with agents, to start with, plus the information on agency websites. It’s no longer a guessing game. But like anything, you’ll get out of your research what you put into it. Since getting an agent is an important career move for many writers, it pays to put a LOT into it.

I’d love to have a discussion about this – if you’re one of those unhappy writers, you might like to take advantage of the Anonymous option and comment.

"The Crane Wife" - Patrick Ness

I was lucky enough to win a free copy of The Crane Wife from A&U, and the reason I put my hand up for it was simply - A Monster Calls, Ness's earlier novel (written from the idea of Siobhan Dowd). I had heard of this book but it was when one of our Hamline faculty, Jane Resh Thomas, read out the first pages to us and gave us all the shivers, that made me want to read the whole thing. I think it was my top book for 2012.

So when The Crane Wife arrived in my mail box, I was looking forward to reading it. The first chapter, where George saves the crane, is like the opening to A Monster Calls - the language is so beautiful and the way Ness describes the encounter is so magical and dark, that you just want it to keep on going for the whole book. Of course, it doesn't. There are lots of other eloquent passages but none, I think, that match the opening.

It's a novel, so we need a story and characters. Plain, ordinary George is caught up by Kumiko, who comes into his copy/print business one day and discovers him cutting shapes out of old books - these shapes are what she needs to complete her tile pictures made of feathers and, in the way of instant celebrity now, the tiles are soon much sought after and people pay big money for them. Except ... the tiles are somehow magical, as are many of the other changes in George's life.

Add in George's daughter, who is unreasonably and uncontrollably angry with the whole world, Rachel with evil intent, the funny and long-suffering printer's assistant Mahmet, the mysterious Kumiko herself, and we have a strange mix of characters who swirl around and bounce off each other without really connecting.

I always tend to look at the structure of a story and, in this case, I think Ness is using metaphor, layering the story in the same way feathers are layered and of differing kinds on a bird. The feathers also act as symbols, so you get the impression of a story that grows and overlaps itself, rather than something with an inexorable linear narrative. I wasn't sure that Ness was completely in control of this - at times I felt the story wavered and tottered under its own ambitions, but I'd rather experience this and think about it afterwards than expect a writer to always play safe and produce something less mysterious!

I believe the story is based on a Japanese folk tale, but it wasn't one I was familiar with and I didn't feel any need to go and look it up (but you can if you want to). It certainly does have that mythological air about it, all the same.

Solitude and the writer

A writer friend of mine (who has a live-in partner) said to me the other day, "I'd like to live alone, and just have them come over when I feel like it. That's not too much to ask, is it?" Then she laughed - a lot - as did I, and then we both sighed.  Yes, it's too much to ask, especially of a relationship where one person is not a writer and doesn't "get" the constant desire for solitude.

What happens for a writer during those solitary times? I can only tell you what happens for me, when I get them (which is rare these days, but more of that later). I find focus, for a start. When someone else is in the house, even if they are not in the same room, their very presence makes me scattered. The only way I have found to combat this is to have a list of things to do (which includes writing) and try really hard to stick to it. It does help. A bit. When I am alone for one or two whole days, it's all about writing. I think, sit in one place, focus, plan, daydream, and write. It's a flow, like a river I am floating along, with no need to dock anywhere unless I need food or sleep.

In solitude I also find ideas. That line to start a poem, that flash that might be a story, that insight into my main character in my current novel - instead of drifting past before I can stop them, or having someone speak to me and pop the idea bubble, I can grab the nearest notebook, write down what I thought and then add more to it as I sit (in peace and quiet) and ponder.

In solitude I write more poems. May Sarton (in her Journal of a Solitude, which I am about to re-read) says "If I were in solitary confinement for a time and knew that no one would ever read what I wrote, I would still write poetry but not novels ... perhaps because a poem is primarily a dialogue with the self and the novel a dialogue with others." When someone else is around you all the time, there is no mental space to have that dialogue with yourself.

In solitude, I find myself. I go inside and dream and think and my thoughts meander wherever they want to. While to other people this might sound like laziness, or a break from the real world, or a form of meditation, for me it is simply time for my brain to do whatever it feels like. Do you remember what that is like?

Maybe this is mostly why I like Facebook. I choose when to log in, I love seeing what my friends are up to, what makes them laugh (and often me, too), what family are doing, and I get to share what I currently find interesting. Then I log out and it's all gone. Peace. (Yes, kind of like that ideal spouse who only comes around when you want them to!)

But as far as solitude and my writing goes, I have finally, after two years of struggling with this and trying various solutions, come to the conclusion that solitude will not find me in opportune moments. I will have to go out and claim it, one way or another.

Google Reader is gone

Apparently Google Reader (and receiving your most-read blog posts using that feed option) is gone, which a lot of people won't be happy about. The news came to me from Copyblogger, which I receive via email.

So I have taken the RSS feed widget off this blog, and replaced it with the "subscribe by Email" widget - it just means the posts from here will come to you via email rather than you reading them in your (no longer existing) Reader. If you really want to continue with RSS, the hot app for reading blogs now is Feedly. The information I have says you can move everything across from Google Reader to Feedly by using the same log in.

Over to you. Hope you'll stick with me!

What kind of book reviewer are you?

The world of book reviewing is changing/has changed. And it's changed faster in the USA than it has in Australia. When my YA novel, Dying to Tell Me , came out in the US, I was actually surprised at how many bloggers had been given review copies, and how much influence they had, let alone the number of reviews that gradually appeared on GoodReads. It very quickly dawned on me that our system in Australia (which basically consists of a review in Magpies, a review (much later) in Reading Time, and the very occasional review, if you're lucky, in the news media outlets) is slower and generally still very traditional.

Yes, librarians everywhere do still look at reviews, but more and more, with time and money restraints, they're relying on recommendations and requests from library patrons (including kids), awards lists and general "noticeability". Or the current buzzword among publishers - discoverability. Reviews have moved down the list of important places for your book to be seen and talked about. But not entirely.

Still, with the internet the way it is now, and publicists at publishing companies keeping a close eye on who is blogging reviews and how much notice is being taken, it's worth thinking about where you sit, if reviewing is something you take reasonably seriously.

Professional - these are people who are paid to write reviews. Or who write reviews for prestigious outlets simply for the kudos. These are also the avenues that many would consider "traditional". How does an average review go? There's a fair amount of space devoted to summarising the plot (or scope of the book) and associated elements. The rule of thumb is that you don't give away the big moments and twists, or the ending. A lot of reviews of this kind are pretty bland, although some reviewers like to gain a name by being as critical as possible. Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times would probably be one of these.

General via Amazon, GoodReads - there are people who are famous for reviewing on Amazon. Their reviews are taken seriously, as are their recommendations. They take their reviewing seriously, too. Some people on GoodReads do the same. But GoodReads tends to be more democratic, I think, and more relaxed. You will get opinions, praise and criticism, but not couched in academic language. On the other hand, Amazon has been in the news for "sock puppet" reviews, where people sometimes review under an alias for scurrilous reasons (such as slamming books by their rivals - who'd have thought?).

Your own blog - there are lots of readers now who have their own review blogs. I'm one of them (occasionally) when a book strikes me in a way that I want to talk about. The difference with me is that I tend to approach a review from a writer's perspective. What did I learn about writing from the book, good or bad? What aspect of the book showed me something new, writing-wise? I think blogs that review books rise or fall based on several things - the reviewer's perspective and approach, whether they bring something new to the discussion, and whether they are truly interested in talking about books. They gain followers in the same way I look at the film reviews in my newspaper - some reviewers I don't even bother with because I know their tastes are nothing like mine, others I will read and take notice of.

Word of mouth - yes, this is the one we have no control over but everyone wants. It doesn't matter if you're a publisher, an editor, a book publicist or an author. You hope that readers out there will go around saying to their friends, "You've got to read this book - it's amazing/really good/will make you cry/ keep you up at night, etc." Really, all you can do as the author is write the best book you can and cross your fingers.

But ultimately, in this day and age, word of mouth has the most power at the moment. Flogging your book with a million tweets and FB posts won't do it. Readers are quick to feel put off by this. A super-duper website won't do it. Readers who love what you write will do it for you. So it comes back to the same thing we always talk about - you have to write what's in your heart,w hat you're passionate about. And if you're a part-time book reviewer? Maybe consider that the way to "pass it forward" is to only talk about and review books you love.

28 days of writing accountability

Three weeks ago I wrote here about starting a writing "challenge" - write every day for at least 30 minutes, and then report in to my accountability partners. The 28 days have finished, and I have written more than 20,000 words. It's rough first draft, sure, but I doubt very much that I would have written nearly that much in the same amount of time. More importantly, I'm creating a writing habit.

What has come out of the challenge for me? First of all, a sense of writing as a component of each and every day. An important component. After all, I'm supposed to be a writer so I should be writing - right? But too often life and other things get in the way, and too often we (I) put writing off for another day. It's sadly too easy to discover that "writing day" hasn't arrived in several weeks or more. So I found that every morning I was already working out when I would write. I tried to make it early, but some days it was the afternoon. Still, if I had something on in the morning, I was aware that writing would be happening later on.

I also have been working on something completely new, in a genre I have only written short stories in before, so it's a bit scary. There have been many times when I've hated what I've written and, at any other time, might have tossed it away and given up. The 30 minute commitment has kept me at it. I have to admit it wasn't until around page 55 that I allowed myself to go back and read the first pages! And I didn't hate them quite so much. But now I have pages to revise.

The other part of this is the accountability.  When I had done my 30 minutes, I had to email the others in my accountability group and tell them. A simple "30 minutes done" was all that was needed, and they did the same to me. The one thing that many of them have said is that they produced far more this month than they would have otherwise, and like me, became far more aware of making time to write.  Some have done double writing to make up for missed days. Not one of us has given up.

I've just started a second lot of 28 days, and some of my accountability partners are joining me again. Some have been talking about what they achieved, and have found new partners to get inspired with. You can start this with just two of you, on any day you like. Give it a go - you might surprise or even amaze yourself!

The Writer's Glass - half-full ...

Last week's post on the pessimistic side of writing these days (The glass half-empty) struck a chord with more than one writer. So all week I was trying to plan out a post that shone with optimism, and fell foul of my own cynical outlook! But luckily, Lucia Nardo came to the rescue over a coffee, and there turned out to be lots of good things promised, once we brainstormed them.

1. You really don't have to write for a market (in fiction, in particular) if you don't want to. Publishers mean it when they say they want "the next hot idea", so if you're experimental and daring, and like writing stuff that no one else in the mainstream does, you could be "hot"! So stop playing it safe and following trends. Create your own.

2. If you have had a lot of great feedback on your writing (from people with experience and objectivity, mind) then you always have the option to self-publish, and to do it inexpensively via Kindle. There are other options out there, too - POD, other e-book formats, all kinds of stuff. Gone are the days when you had to outlay thousands of dollars for books that sat in your garage. Educate yourself on how to make it work, and away you go.

3. Lots of people feel it's PC to condemn social media, but if you are someone who enjoys it and can see how to have fun AND promote your writing and your books, you are ahead of lots of other writers. In the "old days", the only way you met or connected with readers was at festivals and conferences or by mail. Now your readers can connect with you in any way you want - and you get to choose. Don't like Twitter? Have some fun on Facebook. Want to be more professional? Use LinkedIn. All these things are out there for you to use, and they're FREE!

4. Following on from #3, you can now start or contribute to interesting conversations about writing and/or publishing, get a heap of information about publishers that used to be like some kind of weird secret, and enjoy videos and podcasts of writers talking about their processes that once you only got at a writers' festival. Instant inspiration!

5. Following on from #4, there are lots of ways to take writing classes on the internet. There are online university and TAFE classes (paid or free), YouTube videos on all kinds of topics, and free training on all those things you are struggling with, such as Wordpress, Excel or how to make a book trailer.

6. Thanks to the internet (include here the self-published writers who have been discovered  making publishers finally aware of what they were missing - as well as submissions via email instead of huge, weighty Post Office bag), many publishers who had closed to unsolicited submissions are now actively looking for them. Here in Australia, Penguin, Allen & Unwin and Pan Macmillan are all taking manuscripts at certain times of the month (this blog summarises). Now that's something I never thought I'd see!

7. Again, thanks to the internet, there are at least two good websites that assist you to query agents in the US, making sure you target the right ones in terms of genre and subject. AgentQuery is one, Querytracker is another. You can (and should) do further research, but that is a million times easier now, too.

8. While the economic crisis (and continuing panic by some bean counters in publishing) has seen a number of very good editors lose their jobs, the bonus for writers is that a lot of them have become agents, which means more agents who are willing and capable of helping you polish your manuscript to that highly professional standard now required.

So, have I cheered you up yet? I think I've even cheered myself up!

The Writer's Glass - half-empty and leaking...

Today I sat down to continue reading Writing From the Inside Out by Dennis, but as I read his ideas on psychological blocks and strategies, a few things came together in my mind. And one was: any new writer starting out would be entirely forgiven right now for just throwing in the towel and going off to do something else.

Whoa! I’ve been teaching writing for many years and I love helping people to learn the craft and get published. I had to sit back a moment and ask myself why I was being so pessimistic. Well, it’s coming from a variety of things right now, and here are some of the things I have gleaned from industry newsletters, blogs, sources and online chat.

1.      Advances. How low can they go? Some publishers are trying to get writers with debut novels to sign contracts with NO advance. They plead that the market is untried, the budget is strained, the writer is new … Why would you spend several years (at least) working your guts out on a novel and then accept no advance? Because you really want to be published by a “legit” publisher and you figure it’s worth it. The problem is: it’s not. No advance means no real incentive to market your book. You’re on your own with that.

2.      Along with lower and lower advances (citing the state of publishing right now) comes the warning to the less-than-best-selling writer. You’re mid-list and you’re not selling millions so we are forced to reduce your advance. There are murmurings in the UK and Australia that some publishers are starting to “shore up” their argument for lower advances by assuming that PLR and ELR will “make up the difference”.

3.       A lot of children’s and YA writers in particular are feeling jammed between the rock and the hard place – the dollar-making (but often brain-sapping, inspiration-sucking) series treadmill and the stand-alone quality novel that might get shortlisted for an award. If you want to write what’s in your heart and do your absolute best with it, where is there for you to go? Only a few books each year make important shortlists, and then sell more copies. If that’s what you want to write, you can be forgiven for wondering if you have any hope of getting it published. But with every second writer trying to pitch a series, that’s a torturous road, too.

4.      The move to self-publishing, especially in e-books. Yes, 50 Shades of Whatever is making a bomb. So are some others. An awful lot of writers are self-pubbing because they can’t get their books published by traditional publishers, and yes, a lot of those books maybe shouldn’t be published at all. Let’s not get into that. Let’s ask ourselves why writers with really good books (like Hugh Howey with Wool) are self-publishing and then retaining e-rights, or after years of trad publishing, are going it on their own.
Why is this happening?

Because the internet for writers is a combined publishing news service/information update/gossip hub. Savvy writers read and listen and see what is happening, and they don’t like it. They don’t like the low advances and the way they’re expected to do the marketing themselves, so they figure they might as well do it all anyway. If you were an author with a popular blog and a lot of followers on FB and Twitter, wouldn’t you consider it?

You know, I wish I had some answers to all of this. Two years ago, I thought by now that things would have settled down, and to some extent they have. E-book buying has leveled out. Mad-selling books are still with us but we don’t get quite so het up about them. Publishers are still doing great things with great books. But I also wonder (sadly) if trad publishers, in the backs of their minds, are relieved all those writers are self-publishing, and hoping they’ll all just go off and stop submitting unsolicited, and let “real” publishers get on with the job of making money out of “real” books.

Sheesh. I need a glass of wine. While I can still afford it! But I will return - with a post on the glass half-full (metaphorically speaking).

Being accountable for your writing

Everybody knows what a deadline is. Lots of writers I know secretly love a deadline because it is the one thing that stops procrastination and gets you writing. But when you are writing "on spec" - writing without anyone in particular waiting on you to complete, polish and submit by a certain date - it can be hard to stay motivated. Especially with novels. The writing of a novel can go on for years (let's not think about decades!). It can help to be in a writers' group, whether you are workshopping chapters with them or not. The support and encouragement of other writers can be magical sometimes.

Some of you will know from my posts that I am a goal-setter. Years of doing this has proven to me over and over that it works, if you find the right way to approach it that works for you. But it's the day-to-day stuff that gets most of us. It's so easy to spend the whole day on busy-work, doing much and achieving little, least of all writing. If you work in a paying job, it's easy to simply feel too tired to write at night, or even think about writing. Get up half an hour early to write? "I really need my sleep," you say.

So when a billion blog posts (OK, I exaggerate a little) came along at the end of the year about goal setting and procrastination and all of that, I remembered a seminar I went to a few years ago with a hard-talking fitness/motivation guy called Craig Harper. Craig talked about changing or aiming for one thing at a time. For 28 days, and only 28 days. If, at the end of it, it worked for you, give it another 28, and then another. By then, you have a habit. I wrote a lot about this on my ebooks blog.

The key is accountability - checking in with someone. So in January, just through talking to some other writers, I ended up with a couple of accountability partners. Then some other writers wanted to do it as a group. I now check in with both groups. It's not up to me to "police" how they are going at all. I'm only doing this for myself. This is the other key. You also become accountable to yourself.

Right now, I'm up to Day 5. Hardly worth writing about just yet, you might think. But I have 15 pages of a brand new novel already. I have confirmed that yes, writing first is much, much better than trying to do it at the end of the day. Yes, all that other stuff will wait. Yes, my brain does work better in the morning! Best of all, writing for this 30 minutes, no matter what, means I have to push away the dread that the novel is going to be a pile of garbage and just keep going.

As for the first time I tried this after listening to Craig - three years later I am still walking every day for 20 minutes, come rain, hail or shine. Now I'm thinking about my novel while I walk!