Wow! This All Takes A Long Time - Part Two

Okay, so I’ve been away from my blog for a bit (finishing one book, revising another, working a day job... you get the idea.)

Let’s resume our timeline from where I left off in my April 30, 2007 blog “Wow! This All Takes A Long Time!” available here.

April 18, 2007 – Received an email from my editor asking me to sum up the plot of the novel in two paragraphs.

April 19, 2007 – I sent this out as a reply and it was just what she was looking for:

Murder is a fact of life for the vampire Eric, owner of the DemonHeart strip club in Void City, but when he kills a werewolf in self-defense, things get wildly out of hand. Though the local Alpha and his pack of born-again lycanthropes are out for holy retribution, they're the least of Eric's worries when he finds himself caught between his girlfriend Tabitha, who has always wanted to be a vampire, and her sexy little sister Rachel, a tantric witch with a hidden agenda.

Why can't unlife be easy? All Eric wants to do is run his club, drink a little blood and be left alone. In his quest to discover who is trying to end him and why, he must survive car crashes, embalming, sunlight, tantric magic, and werewolves on ice as well as his own nasty temper, forgetfulness, and mistakes. More diamond in the sewer than diamond in the rough, Eric is willing to take on the world in BITE ME, a book where love just might conquer all, even if it is twisted, evil, and undead.

(You’ll note that at this point the book is still named BITE ME. That changed to STAKED later.)

May 3, 2007 – My revisions letter showed up. I talked about that a bit here, but I’ll write more about it now that I have a little time.

Right after the AC went out in my office, during one of the hottest summers I’ve ever experienced, I got my twenty-seven page revision letter. It contained a few pages of what my editor liked about the book and an explanation of what the twenty-some-odd pages of specific revision requests were meant to accomplish. My revised draft was due back on June 18, 2007. As though the (temporary) lack of AC wasn’t enough excitement, our annual family trip to Disney World also fell smack dab in the middle of this time period.

This point is where having a good relationship with your editor is essential.

(Related Note: Over on the http://www.hatrack.com/ writer’s forum, Kathleen Dalton Woodbury recommends the book The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist by Thomas McCormack for all “writers who anticipate receiving revision letters.” I’ve read through most it myself and I agree. Fortunately my editor’s responses, to use the book’s terminology, were thoughtful and apt.)

Fortunately, from previous revisions, I knew my average working rate and could tell that the timeline would be tight, but doable.

After reading through the revisions letter, there were only a few points on which I disagreed. My editor and I bounced a few emails back and forth on those points, and I got feedback on some of the changes I was making in order to assure myself that I was heading in the right direction.

By March 21, 2007, I’d done enough of the revisions to do a page count estimate. As many of the revision requests called for more description or further explanation of various points, I knew the novel was going to grow, but I was worried about how much it might do so. I emailed my editor with the estimated new page count, just to double-check.

June 1, 2007 – Upon arriving in Disney World, and while still working on the revision, I got another email from Jennifer. They needed to change the title again and Jennifer needed some good suggestions by June 19th, 2007, the day after the rewrite was due. Um… yay? Let me just say that it is very surreal to be walking around Disney World throwing possible titles to a vampire book back and forth. Even my five year old got into the discussion.

June 15, 2007 – STAKED became the new title. (See my blog on June 22, 2007 for a list of some of the names we didn’t use. )

June 18, 2007 – I sent in my revised manuscript for the novel formerly known as WELCOME TO THE VOID, then BITE ME, and now STAKED.

June 28, 2007 – Author photo! Did I want one? If I did, they needed it 4” x 5” in at least 300 dpi in black and white. My wife came to the rescue with a handful of photos from our Disney trip and we polled our friends before making a final decision.

July 2, 2007 – My author photo (a picture taken by my son Jonathan on the aforementioned Disney trip) was accepted. It's a good choice, because it shows my real smile, and an interesting choice because it's an up-shot, taken by a three-foot-something kid looking up at his six-foot-something dad.

July 9, 2007 – We signed and sent in the photo permission form. (My wife insisted on explaining to our son his rights regarding his photo and having him sign the form alongside us.)

July 10, 2007 to July 17, 2007 - Jennifer liked my revisions! (Even though the book grew by 20,000 words in the process.) She only had ten specific revision requests in response and we got those hammered out over the next several days. I also had to decide whether I wanted the book to be copywritten under J. F. Lewis or Jeremy F. Lewis. (I picked Jeremy F. Lewis, BTW. Yes, the J stands for Jeremy. The F stands for something else. Ask my mother.)

August 21, 2007- I received my first blurb:

"A pedal-to-the-metal demolition derby of sex and violence. Werewolves and vampires were never so much fun." -Mario Acevedo, author of X-RATED BLOODSUCKERS

(Note: I highly recommend both NYMPHOS OF ROCKY FLATS & X-RATED BLOODSUCKERS, and not just because Mario wrote such a great blurb.)

August 23, 2007 – I was greeted on my way out of the driveway (heading back to work from lunch) by a nice man from DHL. The happy orange-ish yellow envelope contained my copy-written manuscript, a note from my editor, and two green pencils with which to make my edits to the text.

Let me just say that my copy editor, Chris Fuller, did a fantastic job on the copy edits. He did a detailed timeline for the book as well as a character list containing everything from Eric, who is my male co-tagonist, to "unnamed werewolf with brown fur, a friend of Leon’s". There is a reason he gets thanked in my acknowledgements page.

August 28, 2007 – I sent the copy-edited manuscript back (after making a copy of it a Kinko’s just in case) and returned home to find an email from Jennifer with my cover attached. I still don’t have permission to post it, but as soon as I do, you’ll see it here. I printed out a copy of it and took it with me to DragonCon where I showed it around like a total geek. (see my post about DragonCon here.)

September 13, 2007 to September 17, 2007– We did one more last minute rewrite to fix a problem with Tabitha's last chapter and the actual ending of the book. It’s not supposed to be a cliffhanger, but it was still being read as one. I sent the revised bits to Jennifer on Monday with mega thanks for allowing the final change at the last possible moment and the book was ready to be typeset minus the unintentional cliffhangery-ness.

September 20, 2007 – I found out about a cool local con that was going to happen the weekend after my book release and emailed Gary Babb, the literary coordinator, about being a possible guest. Gary was happy to have me onboard (he’s a very nice guy, BTW) and after an email to double-check the firmness of my March 11, 2008 release date, I was on the schedule at my second Con. (Which is funny because, though I was scheduled for my appearance at Con Carolina’s first, Omega Con takes place a couple of months beforehand, so though second to be scheduled, it will be the first at which I appear).

October 15, 2007 – I made good on my promise/threat to send cookies to the folks up at Simon & Schuster. We sent lots and they were well received. Also on or around this date, I got my galley proof in the mail, with another note from Jennifer Heddle, and two more happy green pencils to use when correcting typos.

October 19, 2007- After a week of having all the members of my writing group go through the novel one last time, the marked up corrections were on their way back to my editor with hopefully all of the typos corrected. It was very minor stuff (Eleenth Street to Eleventh Street, that sort of thing).

October 25, 2007 – Two little boxes showed up on my front porch containing a total of fourteen bound advanced uncorrected proofs of STAKED. They have plain blue covers, but I cannot describe how it feels to hold them in my hand.

October 30, 2007 – Cover flats arrived. They look awesome- I even got a foil effect on the title! Whoo-hoo! Around this time, I took a cover flat and a few copies of the advanced uncorrected proofs to local bookstores. (And may I say that Sarah down at The Little Professor was totally cool!)

November 19, 2007 – I had to fill out an Author Questionnaire for the marketing wizards up in New York. I sent it back to them on November 25, 2007, and I hope it’s what they needed. It was a very long questionnaire.

And that brings us up to date. To be honest, I may have included too much detail, but I’m hoping there are a few aspiring authors like myself out there who are craving data like this. I know I wanted this kind of detail even if it only provided a rough outline of useful information about timelines and what happens when.

I was doing other things during this same time that I’ll blog about later, but I’m trying to keep this timeline applicable to STAKED to avoid confusion.

Best,

J

YMMV – Part Two – How Long Is Forever?

I never guessed how long things took in the world of publishing, but you’d think I would have.

Before managing to “Go Pro” myself, I regularly interacted with the publishing industry only as a customer or a retailer. I worked for a local comic and game chain Lion & Unicorn (long gone now, unfortunately) for roughly eight years. For several of those years, I was in charge of ordering comics. We’d place orders roughly three or four months in advance and try to equal our invoice amount in sales by the close of business on Wednesday and double our invoice by the end of business on Saturday. By the end of my tenure there, I think the order gap had narrowed to more like two months in advance.

Being on the creative end makes that two month wait seem like a coffee break. Which isn’t a complaint, exactly, but waiting was stressful until I realized a few key facts. Publishing has a few unique rules all its own. If your agent or editor manages to get anything done for you in or around November, December, or the first half of January, they have accomplished something spectacular and rare. You should be very thankful.

Be patient with them. You are not the only iron they have in the proverbial fire.

On the other hand, if they need something from you, get it to them quickly. They are balancing many different projects and when it’s your book's time in the attention queue, you don’t want to slow things down. There is (at least for me) a great deal of “hurry up and wait” in publishing. My suggestion is that you use that time to WRITE. Writing is the one thing that you can mostly control. It also means that if *gasp* your series bombs and they want another book anyway, just not in the same vein as the one they bought first, you can say, “How about this one?” instead of “I’ll get back to you in a few months.”

At any given time, I usually have one novel that I’m seriously working on, one I’m poking around at, and a third in what I call the brain storming phase. I plan to be prolific.

[Authorial Aside: This doesn’t count all the little notes that wind up in various sections of my hard drive detailing enough of an idea so that I can go back to it and start working later. One of these notes is how I arrived at my first publishable novel, STAKED. You see originally, I was going to write about magicians. I wrote two novels about said magicians before I realized that they really weren’t up to snuff. Some of the mages were perilously one-dimensional and in the climactic throw down in book one, the people who showed up to help the main character had literally no motivation for being there at all. *I* knew why they were there, but I hadn’t shown the reader enough to give them any indication other than a) I guess those other mages really like that guy or b) I guess Jeremy wrote himself into a corner. Rather than go back and rewrite the novels from scratch (which still may happen one day) I started paging through my idea documents, examining scraps of texts and found a note I’d left myself: “Maybe the Eric idea would work better in first person… with a I don’t know what to call it… a co-tagonist. Can I include two alternating first person points of view in a narrative? Meh.” It was followed by a secondary note about how to handle Eric’s potty mouth: “Might work best if you just write it how he says it. He can be censored later.”]

But back to the topic at hand, the process of publishing takes a long time. A very long time. I’ve often wished for a sort of guideline giving approximate gestational periods and steps for a book. I've started such a list in one of these blogs, but won't be able to finish it for a while yet.

J

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY (YMMV)

YMMV – Part One

So... I promised to write this blog quite some time ago and then got bogged down with doing the requested revisions to STAKED (all done and accepted now), the final draft of my first fantasy novel, plus the maps and synopses for it and the two suggested sequels, and working on a different Urban Fantasy novel, this time a twist on werewolves... but I digress.

Getting an agent:

Before I even get into this, let me very briefly tell why I felt I needed an agent first, and in general why I feel most writers who want to be published by the major US publishers need an agent:

I don’t go to many conventions (most of my vacation time gets spent with family)
I don’t have a lot of time to go to conventions, make contacts, attend pitch sessions,
I don’t live in or near New York

Having said that, and assuming that you want to be represented by a literary agent, I have the following warning: I am not an expert, but I do have a literary agent, so my method has worked once. Also, before you even read the advice below or start looking at lists of agents, go to the Preditors and Editors website at: http://anotherealm.com/preditors/ and read it. This will save you time and very possibly money.

When querying an agent, I used the following rules:

1) Send a SASE (Self Addressed Stamped Envelope). They all want one. If you don’t have one, your query may be thrown away. Nearly every site on the internet, every book on getting and agent, and anyone who has and agent will tell you this. If it doesn’t have an SASE, your query might get thrown away unread.

2) Send them what they want. Among other things, this demonstrates your ability to follow instructions. If they don’t want you to submit manuscript material, DON’T SEND ANY. Some agents want none, others want the first five pages, an outline, the first three chapters. For the record, I submitted an email query, was then asked for the first three chapters, and then the balance of the manuscript and a synopsis. Yes, the wait is maddening, but if you don’t give it to them the way they want it, they might not even read it and again… straight into the garbage.

3) Make sure you have an idea what they are looking for. Some have only one requirement: fantastic writing. But you can have the best idea for a Werewolf Transsexual Self-Help Mystery ever and it means nothing if you submit it to an agent that is only accepting Young Adult Caterpillar Thrillers. If your potential agent has a list on a website of likes and dislikes, so much the better. Play those aspects of your submission up, but do it honestly. After all, if you pitch that Werewolf Transsexual Self-Help Mystery to the Young Adult Caterpillar Thrillers agent as the biggest, most fantastic, touching Caterpillar Thriller of them all… and it isn’t... you’ll just piss them off. That is NOT how you want to get word of mouth started.

4) Prevail. What do I mean by that? Do not send one query out, get one rejection and stop. That’s just plain lazy, though it used to be how I did things until I got serious about getting published. It’s very humbling to be sitting at home after work and realize that the reason your dream hasn’t come true yet is because you haven’t mustered enough effort to make it come true… very humbling indeed.

5) Keep your commitments. If you tell your agent you will have something to them by X date, have it to them by X date. I usually try for X-1, if at all possible.

I’m sure there is more advice I should be giving on this subject, but that’s all I have for now.

As always, your mileage may vary. Just because it worked for me, doesn’t mean it’s the “best” way. You have talents and abilities that I don’t have, a spark that makes you different. Use your strengths.

Oh and one last note:

Spell the agent’s name correctly on your query letter…

J

Edit, Revise, Repeat...

Since I last blogged, I’ve gotten the good word back from my editor that she likes most of my changes (there is still one sticking point, but it is mostly resolved) and I’m almost ready to go back through my sequel again, editing it to line up with the changes in STAKED. My much delayed fantasy novel is almost ready to go back through my local writing group for general bashing and crunching. I’ve also sent a query to Marvel Comics about a mini-series I’d like to write for them.

I’ve got a short story under consideration at COSMOS magazine. Their fiction editor wants to pick it up, but they just ran an invasion short story, so he’s waiting an issue or two before pitching it to his boss.

So what does all that have to do with you? If you want to be a writer, keep writing. Never stop. You will write things that (once you finish them) feel like a waste of time, but that doesn’t matter. Put them aside. Maybe you’ll come back to them later. And of course, as everyone says, write every day. I generally try to write for four hours a night, because I write well at night.

Chart your creative times too. Mine are in midmorning, early afternoon, another in the late afternoon, and then again early evening, and around nine o’clock. Chart yours. Most of my big times are smack in the middle of my day job, so I lose them, which means I have to squeeze all I can out of my lunch hour and the nine o’clock rush. If I’m having trouble getting started, a (no longer than) fifteen minute cat nap helps get me started again.

If I can’t get into the right mood for a scene, then I queue up music that fits the scene and sit there with my eyes closed listening to it until it feels right (but not for more than a few minutes). Once the adrenaline is pumping, and I’m all happy and cheerful, or whatever is required for the scene, I turn off the music and pour that feeling out onto the page.

What works for you? (Comments welcome!)

Jeremy F. Lewis