Congrats 2012 ABNA Finalists!

Ginormous congratulations to the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards finalists!

General Fiction Finalists:
Alan Averill, The Beautiful Land
Charles Kelly, Grace Humiston and the Vanishing
Brian Reeves, A Chant of Love and Lamentation

Young Adult Fiction Finalists:
Cassandra Griffin, Dreamcatchers
Rebecca Phillips, Out of Nowhere
Regina Sirois, On Little Wings





Have fun, you guys. Win or lose, you're all in for quite a ride over the next few weeks. It'll be nerve-wracking and amazing and awesome, I promise. To get through it, I recommend positive thoughts, deep breathing exercises, and probably wine. That was what worked for me.

I'm Alive!

I've gone quiet again, I know, and I owe you posts about agents and other things. At the moment I'm staying with my Georgia friends in their new home in the middle of an enchanted forest, and it turns out that Internet access is a little spotty in magical places. Can't say I've missed my usual online time much when there are woods like these to play in, though:

This place was gorgeous even before I Instagrammed the heck out of it, I promise.

I didn't mean to be gone this long . . . but I don't want to leave yet.

The Road to Publication: Part Ten

[This is part 10 of a summary of Spookygirl’s journey toward publication. Use the Progress tag to access all related entries.]

I promised a biggie, didn't I? How's this?

ARCs have landed! Or galleys, or proofs, or whatever you prefer to call them. I AM HOLDING MY BOOK IN MY HANDS. It's really, really gorgeous in person; I couldn't be more pleased.

When I picked up the package from the post office, I had to sit in my car in the parking lot for a good ten minutes before I stopped shaking enough to drive. I only got a few copies, but when we're a little closer to the release date, I'm hoping to hold a giveaway for one. Keep an eye out!

You know, it was just last April that I blogged about winning an ARC of Small Persons with Wings. I never imagined that, a year later, I'd take a similar photo holding my very own book.

The Road to Publication: Part Nine

[This is part 9 of a summary of Spookygirl’s journey toward publication. Use the Progress tag to access all related entries.]

Ooh, ooh! The mail brought me an excuse for a new progress post.

This is the Fall 2012 catalog for Penguin Young Readers Group:

 

 

(What a marvelous moose!)

And this is pg. 37 of the catalog:

Squee!! I happen to think pg. 37 is the best page of the whole thing, but I might just be a little bit biased. Just a little bit. Tiny little bit.

The catalog itself is 364 pages. I find that both wonderful (the world can never have too many books!) and sobering (because I'd like my book to stand out from the crowd, and that's quite a crowd, and that's just the Young Readers division of one publisher).

If you're interested, you can browse PDFs of Penguin's various catalogs here. 

I should have another progress post up soon. It's a biggie. *tents fingers*

On Agents: Part One

I've gotten a couple of questions lately about literary agents, so I figured now would be a good time to write a few posts about my experiences with the Great Agent Hunt. Those of you currently looking for an agent have my respect and sympathy -- it's not an easy game to play. I spent my time down in the trenches, believe me.

Late last year I signed with Danielle Chiotti of Upstart Crow Literary. Danielle is awesome; it's because of her enthusiasm that I finished the Underbed draft as soon as I did.

Believe it or not, winning the ABNA contest and having a contract with a Penguin imprint doesn't guarantee you'll have agents groveling at your feet. (Actually, I'm pretty sure groveling isn't in their DNA.) I did hear from a few after the 2011 finalists were announced, and I queried a few more, including two who had already rejected Spookygirl. Danielle was one of those -- back in 2009 she turned it down because she had a client with a similar project. She did, however, compliment the partial she read, calling Violet "very real and likeable." Her rejection was one of the nicest I received, and I requeried her last year in case circumstances had changed. They had.

But landing an agent when you're already under contract is trickier than it sounds. The sale's already been made, so there's no commission there. An interested agent is betting on two things: related rights and future books. I knew I needed representation for the former, as I was starting to get questions from production companies about Spookygirl's film rights. And of course, I wanted to find an agent who would look beyond my first contract and help me shape my career. Danielle and I discussed that during a great phone conversation; I guess she liked what she heard, because she made an offer of representation that I gladly accepted.

That's where my Great Agent Hunt ended, after nearly ten years and close to one hundred rejections. I'll go into more detail on all that in future posts -- I can share tips, admit to some of the awful mistakes I made, and mutter under my breath about a few of my not-so-great query experiences (without naming names, of course!). If there's anything else you'd like me to cover, let me know in the comments.

Congrats and a Shout-Out

Congratulations to the quarterfinalists in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards! I know it's hard, but try not to let the suspense keep you up at night while you wait for next month's semifinals...

In other ABNA news, be sure to visit Gregory Hill's website for more information about East of Denver, the 2011 ABNA General Fiction winner. East of Denver comes out July 5, and I can't wait to read it.

A Monster of a Manuscript

I'll continue my series about ABNA and Spookygirl as soon as I have more news! Meanwhile...

Why is it that a brilliant editing brainstorm is always bound to hit right after you've submitted a manuscript? You can pick at a project for weeks, but as soon as you send it off somewhere, BAM, that's when you realize how you can make it even better.

Or maybe that's just me. I sent off the current draft of Underbed to my agent, and minutes later the ideas began to hit -- a way to restructure and strengthen the climax, a detail that will tighten Jeremy Serpent's connection to one of his enemies, etc.. Oh well. I'll be revising again soon enough; those things can happen then.

I'm not sure how I feel about Underbed. The concept's been lurking in my head since last year; I originally meant to write it during last year's NaNoWriMo, but November was taken up by Spookygirl revisions and holiday monster sales. So I took the idea -- a teenage girl revisits the childhood nightmares that still lurk under her bed -- and filed it away for later.

I finally wrote the first Underbed draft during the last three weeks in January. I revised it while I was out of town in February. That's the fastest I've ever churned out a revised draft, and it's still too fresh in my mind for me to be objective. I always go through an UGH IT'S TERRIBLE TAKE IT AWAY phase with new projects, and I'm still there with this one. Still, some of its details make me smile, and at least I finally found a story for Serpent. (He's been waiting for six or eight years. He's shown extraordinary patience for a monster.) So maybe there's so merit in the mess. We'll see.

Now it's time to let it simmer, wait for feedback, and tackle more of my own monsters in the meantime.