Re-surfacing

My sincere apologies for blowing this off - life got in the way and quite honestly, I started to give into the negative garbage that keeps me from continuing to punch on getting published. I read this article today:

http://gapingvoid.com/2008/01/27/how-to-get-published-in-france/

and it re-energized me to continue trying new ways to get published. I have sent query letters - over 100 in the past 3 months - and if people get back at all, it's with a rejection slip. I'm not complaining, just saying that it's hard work.

I don't mind hard work.

So with that in mind, I'm going to reboot the Flotilla blog and start trying to rope together the good things that Hugh talked about with my own personal network of folk and see where we go from there. If for nothing else, it'll keep me busy ;)

Cheers...

Quick Update

Joe was kind enough to work with me on producing a tighter query letter (Thank you, again) and I've started the process all over again with a new sheet of potential agents. I did find this tool that I thought you would be interested in:

Querytracker.net

The free version allows you to search for and contact agents that specialize in your particular genre of writing - before this I was sitting there with a copy of Writer's Marketplace and a highlighter, noting potential agents and putting them into a Google doc.

This is a laborious process as you can imagine, since Writer's Marketplace is published every year and contact information can change quickly. I was still having to Google each agent for more information after reading through WM and I found it exhausting. So we'll see where this goes - I'll keep you posted.

Still...

I describe myself as a 'successful writer' in that, I've written something and sometimes people care to read it. As Mr. Quirk points out in other blog posts - most writers also have day jobs and I'm no exception. As it stands, I work in a fairly large and unnamed corporation as a contract IT resource - I'm the guy that you don't think of as very important and ironically, I've seen all of your emails and personal files. Weird.

More Quirky Love

Joe Quirk over at SFGate gave me some more love yesterday - I feel all fuzzy inside.

"Starting Over" - Published on Hackwriters.com

(Just Like) Starting Over was re-published on Hackwriters. It was first published on Indiebloggers.org (now dead) and I'm happy to see it get some life again.

Some More News...

Again - major apologies for not keeping you posted. Things have been looking up - at least I'm moving in the right direction. Here's a recap of what has been happening with the novel:

• In the past 6 months, I've sent ~60 queries to different agents as referenced in the Writer's Marketplace. 60 queries, 30 rejections and one request for more of the novel that later turned into a rejection.
• I started talking to Joe Quirk over at SFGate.com's City Brights. We had a conversation that later turned into this blog post about getting published.
• Later conversations with Joe turned into this conversation - I'll just quote it:

"If your first 15 pages is killer, your goal is to get them to turn over the letter and read page one. They will decide to turn you down by the bottom of page one. If they are hooked, they make keep
reading, then call you and ask for the rest. Despite their
frustration with the "slush pile," agents long to find the next new
writer."

and my response was:
Joe - I have no way to tell whether my novel is a slow opener, other than to simply give you the first two or three pages and see what you think. All I really need is 'slow-opener' or not - or "this sucks" or not No other work required. Thanks and apologies in advance
...and then I sent the first 3 pages of the novel to him. Joe's response was:

Holy s***, dude, the answer is Yes.
You passed this test: I said, "Uh-oh, another writer wants me to read his chapter. Will I have to tell him it's bad? Let me just glance at the first sentence and look at it later. Hey, I just read a whole paragraph. Hey this is ... "
Then my mind turned off and I just read. That's a sign of a good story. I say, just a mention of who you published with, an opening paragraph, and then this chapter with an SASE, and you're good to go. Send to 25 agents at once.

And so I have a best-selling author telling me that he loves what I wrote. If that's not the definition of 'awesome', I don't know what is.

New Stuff

My tremendous apologies for lack of updates - here's what has been happening:

I've been trying to get published. This is a tedious process with no clear, proven path and even less so for someone who hasn't been published before. There have been some bright spots and I wanted to share one of them with you:

Joe Quirk over at SFGate was sympathetic to my plight and had some interesting insights that became this blog post. If you're also starting out in the game, you are usually free to ask for help and if you do it often enough you'll find the mentorship and assistance you're seeking. Be sure to say thank you.

There's more to say but I'll update you in a post later today - this is something I wanted to have written on its own. Cheers.