Spring's Sprung. Sort of.

Spring. Spring. Spring. News of the spring. I've found my lawn. It's a mess. There's quite a lot of dog poop to clean up. When the heck did the pooch do all that? I suppose it slunk down through the snow as it melted. (Yes, she's a mountain pug that prefers to climb the snow banks and do her business atop mount stinkmore.)

In other bummer-ific news, I didn't reach the quarterfinals of ABNA. The feedback consisted of one exceedingly positive review, which I'm guessing would have been a vote to stay on the island, as well as one middling review, which was likely a vote that cast me off the island. At least I know my pitch was solid enough to get to the second round. Moving on.

Querying wasn't a focus for me recently. I dabbled in the odd contest over the past year, queried a couple of times and then jumped into ABNA. Most of the time was spent researching agents and writing Ghost Fishing. Now I'll jump in, head first. The thing about "head first", is if you're not careful where you jump, you wind up with a headache or worse.

In any event, it's spring, right? I think I might have mentioned that. I took my kids and my daughter's three best friends to Rita's for ices on the very first day of spring. The four girls sat at the picnic table and slurped up their various flavors, two of which left them crimson mouthed. My mint oreo cream ice, which looked not entirely unlike cold split pea soup, tasted precisely like icy mint oreo ice cream. Yum.

Did I mention we're getting somewhere between three and seven inches of snow tomorrow? Although I'm beyond tired of winter weather, given a choice between more snow and an earthquake/tsunami combo, I'll take the former.

Four Things on my mind

As I write this, four things are on my mind.

First: it's Friday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Second: Japan. The images I see every morning and night on the news are terrifying, horrifying and saddening. Earthquake. Tsunami. Nuclear Disaster. I'm not going to comment on nuclear energy here. It's horribly ironic, though, that we've taken two sucker punches from mother nature and then cut ourselves off at the kneecaps. In the process, we'll likely have dealt not just humanity, but mother nature a severe blow. I'm not a big prayer guy, but I'm sending them to all the people

Third: A little less than four days from now, I'll know if Urban Mythos made it to the quarterfinals round of ABNA. I'm curious about when I'll see feedback on my excerpt. Will it be when the quarter finalists are announced on March 22nd or prior to that?

Fourth: After much research and discussion, I'm applying to get into one specific MBA program this weekend. Presuming I get in -- there's no reason I shouldn't -- the program will start in April. Yikes!

I will leave you with Steven Tyler's excellent quote from American Idol this past week. When asked about rocker contestant James Durban, he responded:

That man right there has a rich vein of inner crazy.

ABNA - Happy Relief

Finally! Amazon updated the ABNA page on their web site today, and my pitch for Urban Mythos enabled me to reach the second round. You can find the complete list of the YA entries that made the second round on the ABNA page. So, now I'm one of 1000 YA novels whose excerpts will be critiqued and scored by Amazon editors and at least one Amazon top reviewer. I'm not sure if the YA group had completely filled up to the 10,000 entries that were permitted, although the General Fiction group had.

So now I wait until March 22nd, when Amazon announces the Quarter-Finalists. Big shout-outs and congrats to my fellow writing buddies Kate Larkindale, Louisa Clarkson, and Tamara Heiner (and hubby) who also made the cut!

Here's the pitch that got me into the second round.

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Sixteen-year-old Zydeco Hill uncovers a plot to capture former mythological creatures and expel them to a barren world filled with hungry beasts. Two years since his own transformation from griffin to human, he's been attending clandestine meetings of the city's ex-mythological creatures. When the police raid one such meeting, he discovers the conspiracy goes all the way up to the mayor's office.

As other mythos vanish from the city's streets, the deputy mayor demands Zydeco turn in Octavio, the missing leader of their kind. His initial resistance causes the disappearance of both his stepmother and best friend, and it won't be long before they're served up as chimera-chow. While trying to keep the mythological truth from the girl he adores, Zydeco must rescue his friends and step-mom. Along the way, he unearths critical information about an even larger conspiracy to rid the world of his brethren, but he needs Octavio's help to put it to use. The only problem is he has no idea where the guy is hiding.

At 80,000 words, Urban Mythos is a young adult urban fantasy novel that blends action and romance while dealing with issues of trust and assimilation. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the distinctive voice and humor of S.G. Browne's Breathers: A Zombie's Lament and Catherine Jinks' The Reformed Vampire Support Group.

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Maybe I can breathe now and get back to Ghost Fishing.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Tom Petty had it right. ABNA judging is underway, and all I can do is wait. Thousands of entrants with just a pitch to differentiate us all. It'll be another couple of weeks until I find out if I make the first cut, which I haven't done before. Of course those previous tries were with a different book.

Meanwhile, I soldier on. I've been spending a lot of time reading and critiquing the revisions on Alex Lidell's terrific YA fantasy, Service of the Crown. It's on the slate to be published by Dial Books, and was a finalist in last year's ABNA. She's done a great job with these changes. When this book comes out - buy it! Hmm. Now I need to find out exactly when it will be coming out.

While that's going on, I'm plugging along on Ghost Fishing, my middle grade adventure. I just finished writing the chapter in which the protagonist encounters a somewhat grumpy chimpanzee poet who wears a suit and fedora. The next chapter is going to be fun to write because I get to introduce the antagonist and some spooky bits. And then it's on to the next location. I've got a bad feeling, though, that my word count is going to be completely over the top for middle grade. Ah, well. I'll deal with that during revisions. For now, the words must fly.

And I've been getting to know my Nook Color quite a bit more. I bought a couple of eBooks from Borders on New Years' Day - they had a big sale - $5 books. And yes, you can buy an ebook for the Nook from everyone but Amazon. But I haven't read them yet, because all the eBooks I reserved at my local library suddenly became available. I was bombarded with eMails listing all the eBooks I initially reserved because, well, I wanted to read something. But I've read The Hobbit and The Stand too many times to count, so I let those reservations expire. However, Seth Grahame-Smith's, Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter was a total blast. And now I'm in the middle of Sara Gruen's, Ape House, which is equally terrific, albeit for entirely different reasons.

Did I mention that the Nook Color is the best-selling item in Barnes & Noble's nearly 40 year history?

Back to waiting!

ABNA - The Final Pitch

Thank you all so much for you excellent feedback. I think I've got what I'm looking for in my ABNA pitch. For some reason, I had it in my head that ABNA started this coming week. Fortunately, it's not for another week. Or maybe that's unfortunately? I don't know. It depends on how my Jets do today against the evil empire. It's always appropriate to be in a good frame of mind when entering a contest.

Here's the pitch after all the wonderful critiques.

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Sixteen-year-old Zydeco Hill uncovers a plot to capture former mythological creatures and expel them to a barren world filled with hungry beasts. Two years since his own transformation from griffin to human, he’s been attending clandestine meetings of the city’s ex-mythological creatures. When the police raid one such meeting, he discovers the conspiracy goes all the way up to the mayor’s office.

As other mythos vanish from the city’s streets, the deputy mayor demands Zydeco turn in Octavio, the missing leader of their kind. His initial resistance causes the disappearance of both his stepmother and best friend, and it won’t be long before they’re served up as chimera-chow. While trying to keep the mythological truth from the girl he adores, Zydeco must rescue his friends and step-mom. Along the way, he unearths critical information about an even larger conspiracy to rid the world of his brethren, but he needs Octavio’s help to put it to use. The only problem is he has no idea where the guy is hiding.

At 80,000 words, Urban Mythos is a young adult urban fantasy novel that blends action and romance while dealing with issues of trust and assimilation. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the distinctive voice and humor of S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament and Catherine Jinks’ The Reformed Vampire Support Group.

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ABNA 2011 - Going for it

I have made up my mind. I'm going to submit Urban Mythos to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest next week (or the week thereafter). So now, I've got to tune up my pitch. I've queried it a few times, but the pitch is a little different - not much, but a bit. What do I have to lose, right?

Without further ado, I present to you the first iteration of the ABNA pitch for Urban Mythos. I would love to get your opinions, advice, critiques, comments, or jokes, so please, please, please, let me know what you think. What's the comment box for anyway?

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Sixteen-year-old Zydeco Hill discovers a plot to capture former mythological creatures and expel them to a barren world filled with hungry beasts. You wouldn’t think a city kid like Zydeco would care about their plight, except he’s one of them. Two years removed from his own transformation from griffin to human, he’s been attending meetings of a clandestine support group for the city’s ex-mythological creatures. When the police raid one such meeting, he discovers that the conspiracy goes all the way up to the mayor’s office.

As other mythos vanish from the city’s streets, the deputy mayor demands that Zydeco turn in Octavio, the missing leader of their local support group. His initial resistance results in the disappearance of both his stepmother and best friend, and it won’t be long before they’re served up as chimera-chow. Still trying to keep the mythological truth from the girl he adores, Zydeco decides to rescue his friends and step-mom rather than betray Octavio. Along the way, he unearths critical information about an even larger conspiracy to rid the world of his brethren, but he needs Octavio's help to put it to use. The only problem is he has no idea where the guy is hiding.

Urban Mythos, an 80,000 word young adult urban fantasy novel, blends action and romance while dealing with issues of trust and fitting in with mainstream society. It will appeal to readers who enjoy the distinctive voice and humor of S.G. Browne’s Breathers: A Zombie’s Lament and Catherine Jinks’ The Reformed Vampire Support Group.

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ABNA and the back-story tweak

Late last week I decided to enter the Amazon Breakout Novel Contest. This year, they added a separate Young Adult category for submission, which is a pretty cool deal for us YA writers because our books were compared against adult fiction in the past. They really are different categories in my view. The style of YA is often quite distinct and needed its own special place.

Seeing as how Mythos wasn't ready, I decided to enter The Children of Midian. However, I realized some things needed changing: the opening and the pitch. As far as the opening goes, I eliminated chapter one and the first half of chapter two. The book now begins with fourteen-year-old Elliot in the woods at dusk, moments before curiosity brings him into the shack from which he's carried off to Midian.

When I originally wrote Midian, I didn't subscribe to the notion that your book should begin when everything changes for your protagonist. I wrote the story where it began. In fact, I once had a way cool prologue, but I put the thing in the guillotine. In theory, everything that occurs before the "big change" is nothing but back-story. That includes prologues. Once this finally sunk into this slack brain of mine, it became quite simple.

What are you supposed to do with back-story? You weave it in throughout your book. In the case of Midian, I've long feared starting where things changed for Elliot because some crucial character information resided in those opening chapters. When it "clicked" this weekend, I was able to weave those critical bits of back-story into the opening scene. And wouldn't you know it? The book opens at a brisker pace, with a bonus of 4000 fewer words!

As far as pitch goes, well, I had one already. But it seemed to me I could do worse than to come up with something entirely different - a whole from scratch kind of thing. So, I spent Sunday before and after the Jets game (sniff) working that puppy until the light bulb stayed on.

New opening? Check.
New pitch? Check.

Last year I stayed up until midnight Sunday into Monday to submit. This year, I got up at the butt-crack of dawn Monday and submitted. Heck, I had to get up and go to work anyway, didn't I? So now I wait. Actually, I'm going to completely tune it out and resume working on Mythos. Spealing of Mythos, I owe you all a new Birth of a Novel entry.

To write or to query or to ABNA?

As most of you know, I've been heads down lately on my YA urban fantasy, Mythos. This has left me precious little time to focus on finding an agent or publishing venue for The Children of Midian. It's actually been liberating not to think or worry about Midian over the last few months.

It's the new year, though, and with the new year comes new ideals and resolutions. Should I spend time searching out some agents to query? Should I submit directly to some small press publishers? If I do this, I probably need to go back and reshape my query, focusing on Midian's crossover nature - it's somewhere between middle grade and young adult, and the word count reflects it. Curse that word count.

Another intriguing option is the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest. This year, they've added a Young Adult Literature category, which is sweet, because that's all me. I gave this contest a shot last year, but like American Idol or any fun amusement park ride, why not go again? Considering they've added that YA niche, I think it gives YA writers a better shot.

I might also do both. Or neither. I'm so engrossed in Mythos and want to see it through, that I'd prefer fewer distractions over and above life and family and work and blogging and tweeting.

I wonder what I will do!