My friends, I am truly on a roll. In the last month I have read four novels. This is a record for me, and I believe all of the credit goes to my Kindle. This little electronic device has revolutionized the way I read. I’m sure there’s some kind of physical/mechanical reason for this. I have no idea what it is, but I’m reading faster, I’m reading better, and most importantly… I’m reading.

Which puts me into a position I’m not used to. I am turning into a book purchaser. Which is neat, because I’m also trying my level best to be a published novelist. Blog posts and advice on marketing and packaging one’s manuscript have proliferated on Internet like a swarm of jackrabbits. I’ve read all kinds of schemes, including how to make your novel “viral” (I was certain Robin Cook would have been involved somehow, but what can you do?)

But when you really boil things down, all of the advice in the world is reduced to a question anyone can answer: “How do I decide what book to buy?”

Mehhh... that one has a mauve cover. Mauve makes me itch.

Assuming one does not consult star charts or sheep’s entrails, the process is internal. And the answer is different for everyone. I’ve purchased four e-books in the last month, and I’m about to do it again. This time, however, I’m dissecting my thought process as I make this routine decision.

Why? Because I want to internalize the process. I want to know why anyone would answer this question with a book I have written. Turns out, it’s easier said than done.

The last four books I’ve read have been the Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, and World War Z by Max Brooks. I chose to pick up The Hunger Games because I wanted to read it before I saw the movie. Okay, fair enough. I then picked up the rest of the trilogy because the first book did a fine job of wanting me to finish out Katniss’s journey.

Then I was stuck… no more Hunger Games books to necessarily follow. I floundered for a day or so before I read an article on IMDB.com about casting the World War Z movie. That reminded me of how I almost bought World War Z last year, but decided to wait until I had a Kindle to buy it in electronic format. Bingo. Decision made (and I’m happy to say it was the correct decision. What a book!)

And so, here I am again, faced with the decision.

Last night I was hopscotching around the blogosphere when I ran into an article on Joseph Campbell’s Monomyth structure. This article referenced Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game and how it conformed to the Monomyth. That got me thinking about how I had mentioned to a friend of mine recently that I had never read Ender’s Game. She told me it was being made into a movie, and BAM! Now I’m worried about the movie coming out without having read the book.

It’s highly likely I’ll end up buying Ender’s Game, now. But here’s the thing… Hollywood appears to be driving my purchasing decisions, and I’m not 100% comfortable with this. I say that, but why should that be the case? Why should I feel that Hollywood somehow besmirches my literature decisions? Is there some misplaced distrust I’ve cultivated against the movie machine? Or is it not the case that Hollywood is farming popular literature for a reason?

At the end of the day, however, this dissection of my purchasing process hasn’t benefited me all that much as a writer. If a reader like me is the standard, I’ll have to get a novel published, sell the movie rights, and wait for the casting buzz to hit the Internet before people will buy the book. That’s kind of bass-ackwards. The good news is that I’m not the average reader. I’m a relative new-comer to mass literature ingestion (dibs on Mass Literature Ingestion as a band name). There are old school readers out there eager to consume. I’m not in their heads just yet, so I’ll fall back on some solid advice I received from a composition teacher:

“The best thing you can do is to write a great book. Everything else is secondary.”

Amen, Dr. Crone. Amen.

Image credit: David Castillo Dominici

I wasn’t specifically tagged for this, but I’m going to take a lead from Liz Norris, whose novel UNRAVELING is coming out this month, and roll the Lucky 7 game on the good old blog.

Here’s the idea:

1. Go to the seventh or seventy-seventh page of our WIP.
2. Count down seven lines.
3. Copy the seven sentences that follow and post them.
4. Tag seven other authors.

I’m going to skip step #4, as I tend not to bother people when I can avoid it (more seldom than you might imagine). Here’s the seven sentences from page seven:

“I couldn’t imagine why I’d stayed away for so long. The Druid Hill Club was about as old as some of the Square States, founded just after the Civil War by Baltimore’s industry kings. Since that time, all manner of notable politicians and businessmen frequented the club for its atmosphere, seclusion, and the company of young women.

It was exactly my kind of joint.

“Hell with it,” I grumbled as I plunged out into the evening, my shoes crunching on the gravel alongside the pavement.

There was a time when I would drive directly up to the porte cochere, hand the valet my keys, and plunge into a world of discrete inebriation. By the time I reached the double oak doors, however, I didn’t even see a valet on duty. “

If you’re an author with a blog, and you see this… consider yourself tagged!

Greetings from the Land of Limbo!

First, a quick update. I am still actively querying The Curse Merchant, and there have been nibbles on the old fishing line. Beyond the blog contest in February which generated some requests for partials (and a full!), I have had two agents request full manuscripts from cold querying. Now proceeds the Long Wait. Nothing can really prepare you for the Long Wait. You just dive in and… well… wait.

What I have learned from the query process so far:

1. Social Media can be an invaluable tool, if used properly. Improper use would include querying via Twitter/Facebook, badgering agents, spamming Twitter feeds, etc. I have learned volumes not just about the agencies and their requirements, but also about the particular flavors of fiction that the individual agents are really wanting to see.

2. Blogs = free information. The querying process itself has its own set of unwritten rules. Scratch that, they are totally written and published on agent blogs. It’s out there, it’s free, and it’s absolutely worth reading.

3. You’re never too cool to feel the sting of rejection. I’ve steeled myself for rejection, prepared for it, meditated and even endured an 80’s era training montage set to Kenny Loggins. Still, when that form rejection rolls into the inbox, it stings. I figure it always will, because if it didn’t, I wouldn’t care about my manuscript.

4. It is absolutely vital to keep busy writing, but at the same time it doesn’t totally work.

"Hey, let me put you on hold a second... I need to hit refresh on Querytracker."

On that note, here’s what I’ve been doing to keep moving forward on my writing career.

My next long-format project is still in pre-writing phase. Namely, outlining. Any reader of my blog knows I can be unspeakably left-brained about my pre-writing. This next project has a lot more twists and turns than did Curse Merchant, and so a waterproof outline is the only thing keeping me from slipping into a Salvador Dali-esque landscape of dangling plots and melting clocks.

In addition, I began a short story that had crawled into my noodle and refused to wiggle its way back out without being written. However, I ran into a snag. Point of View.

I am brutal about POV. It was drilled into my head at an early stage in my writing career that POV must be ruthlessly restricted. Head-hopping is a cardinal sin in Sloan-ville. What’s worse, I find that the books I have enjoyed recently have been Deep Third Person, burying the reader into the head of the protagonist. The Hunger Games are an example of this. Nothing happens outside of the sensory perception or internal monologue of the main character.

That said, I must admit to being  overly dogmatic in this regard. There are other perfectly valid POV’s out there. This is the bias I was given long ago, and I haven’t had much luck shaking it. The good news is that it has steered me clear of certain liberties that plague poor writing.

The bad news is this short story has wandered into omniscient POV. I’m not comfortable in omniscient POV. It’s just too… wide. I get agoraphobic when writing in omniscient. Right at the midpoint, I started the double-guessing game. Is this good? Does it suck? Should I drink more whiskey until it improves?

Then it occurred to me. I’m writing a screenplay. Yep. It’s all there. Emphasis on blocking and physical descriptions. Setting. Camera angles. All I had to do was start over.

Start. Over.

Joy.

Well, start over I have, and I’m past where I left off with the prose version. The good news is that I may or may not have a contact on the West Coast who is eager to take a look at it when it’s ready. How’s THAT for motivation?

Image credit: David Castillo Dominic