L.J. Longo's Blog, page 3

Three Lessons From The Brooklyn Writers’ Workshop

So last weekend I went to Brooklyn’s Writer Conference and I
learned a lot about how to start a novel, what YA is (according to one agent)
and especially how to pitch to an agent. I’ll be writing about those other two
topics later on, but this pitching thing is tough. I got a request for a
partial and two and a half requests to send first chapters (I’ll explain the
“and a half” below), so fairly successful. I wanted to get my notes on it out
into the world so that I could reference them myself the next time I pitch.

It boils down to three things: Tell a Story, Know Your Audience, and Be Human and Professional

Be Human and Professional

I had meetings with four agents
and the first one was late to our pitch. I was terrifically nervous, so in a
way it was good because I had a moment to sit and feel in control of the space.
This also gave me the opportunity to eavesdrop on the other writers pitching.

Oh, we are awkward, nervous
people.

I heard a lot of rehearsed and
lifeless pitches, and it reminded me of watching middle-school students suffer
through their first presentations. The same advice teachers gave you then,
counts now. Don’t recite your notes by rote. Smile. Make eye contact.

Now, I’ve got a leg-up on other
authors in this way. My day job is as a teacher and tour guide, so while I am
the strong, silent, prefer-to-sit-under-the-stairs-and-take-notes-on-mere-mortals
type, I’ve learned to command a conversation and talk naturally.

There’s a ton of resources on how
to speak confidently at job interviews and in business meetings, but I think
the best thing to do treat the agent like a person. They are not a genie who
will grant you a best-seller if you rub them the right way (please don’t rub
the agents). So, get out of the straight-jacket of a rehearsed monologue.

I can’t believe this is advice we
need to hear, but I saw this three or four times (mostly men pitching fantasy
to women): don’t argue with an agent during a pitch. I don’t care if she just
said that the only good fantasy is about sparkly vampires or you will never
sell your book. Bottle your pride, your rage, your contrarian nature and be
professional. That agent wasn’t for you; don’t go off on her and make an enemy
out of all the other agents in the room.

It helps me to start the
conversation with something besides the business (since the temperature was
wildly fluctuating at the conference I opened with the weather. Terrible idea
in writer, awesome advice for small talk.) Then lead into my name and
credentials.

Tell a Story

With one of the agents, I got
detoured from my pitch and we went down a rabbit hole about the world. I got so
carried away explaining the history of the world, how magic functioned, how it
was based off the people in the area I was raised, that I never got around to
telling her about the main characters’ stories. Not until she asked me, “what
are the stakes? What’s the germ of the story?” I got lucky that she brought us
back to that, because the details of my world weren’t enough to sell her on the
pitch.

I applied her advice (leading with
a log line that I had buried deeper in my pitch) and it lead me to my most
successful pitch. I went into charming storyteller mode and told my novel the
way I talk about movies and pieces of art. I hit all the marks professionally
but entertainingly and it engaged the agent enough to ask for a full partial.
We also finished early so I got to talk about my sales as a romance writer, my
other work and ideas, and how the market might respond to such a book.

Know Your Audience

A.K.A.: do your fucking research. When
I signed up for the conference, I remember choosing one agent who only
represented fantasy and thinking she’d be a great fit not for the novel I’d be
pitching to everyone else, but for a separate project I’d just finished. So, I
signed on for her and thought in my hubris I would prepare a second pitch just
for her.

I forgot.

I cannot explain how embarrassing
it was to sit down with an agent and have her listen to me pitch a YA
fantasy/sci-fi romance and then immediately explain she doesn’t represent
sci-fi. It’s especially bad, when you’ve paid for the pitch session. But this
is good advice for an email query too. When an agent reads queries, she is
working for free, so not researching wastes her time and more importantly your
rejection threshold. There you are agonizing for two days, two weeks, two
months anticipating feedback and she deleted your email because you didn’t
respect her guidelines.

When things went south, I was able
to roll with it. I apologized for the misunderstanding and asked how I could
improve my pitch and what advice she had (you know besides, doing my fucking
research).

Towards the end of our
conversation, I thought she was throwing me a bone when she gave me the name of
another agent at her company who might fit the work. I almost didn’t write the
name down, since I figured it was a pity gesture. But I’m glad I did, because
she was right; that other agent would be a really good fit for my book. Because
I acted like an adult and didn’t collapse completely under my own humiliation
and despair, I have a personal introduction to an agent who has represented a
lot of very lengthy books that have sold well. Which is like… half a point,
right?

On the other hand, I knew one of
the agents dislikes The Fae, so when I referred to my world I was able to speak
to that by calling it a kind of post-industrial fairyland, but you know without
the fairies. And that really interested him.

So, know the agent, be a kind professional, and tell a
story. Pitching is hard; but it’s a necessary step in an author’s career. You
can’t level up until you master it.

So… I’m Updating my site

I just want to apologize for the ton of e-mails that have come (and unfortunately will continue to come) your way. I promise normal levels of non-activity will resume shortly; I’m just prepping for a new batch of agent submissions.

Enjoy this brief refresher of everything I’ve ever published. lol.

Needle and Knife: Excerpt

This is a very disturbing story. Seriously, it involves baby mutilation. Not my usual romance.

But the full story won honorable mention in the horror category of the Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Contest.

In Emilia’s dream, someone in a tower holds a baby. A brand new white baby. Painfully blue eyes look up with complete trust. He knows he will not fall. He’s weak, new, and undoubtedly male, but he’s safe and so pale.

The hands, which look so dark and brown against that new white flesh, tickle the baby’s ankle. The baby laughs. The big hand wraps around a tiny fat ankle and bends the chubby pink leg behind the baby’s back. He fusses. Blue eyes squint. He whines tiny and cute. The hand twists, folding the fat unformed bulb that will become the baby’s knee. Twists too far. The baby arches, curls, tries to pull his foot away from his back. He blurts annoyed squalls. Farther still. The baby cries.

Farther. New bone cracks.

The baby screams.

A knife glints against the baby’s breast and a bright bubble of blood appears over the new heart.

Emilia wakes, startled but soundless. She’s in the backseat of her grandfather’s car, head tipped back on the rich leather. It’s a North American car imported to Chile by a cargo freighter as Grandfather would remind her proudly. Her heart thuds in her ears and she looks around. Her father dozes beside her, her mother stares forward in the front seat, looking at the darkness of the Chilean countryside. Grandfather drives, she can see his soft brown hands on the wheel. Everyone in the car ought to hear the pulsing of her heart, but no one does.

She wants to tell her nightmare, to hear comforting words, but even at nearly nine she will not allow herself that weakness. Her right hand still makes a tight fist, thinking it holds a knife. Her left arm still curls as if cradling a new baby – her cousin, Vicente, she knows when she’s awake.

To shake the dream, Emilia stretches her arms and leans forward to thrust her head between her grandfather and her mother. She smells strong coffee and catches the glow of her mother’s Blackberry in her pocket.

Mother puts her hand on Emilia’s head and strokes her braided hair. Says nothing.

Grandfather whispers without taking his hands from the wheel. “Is that my curious little snake?”

Emilia smiles and hisses at him.

“Go to sleep, Lia.” Mother glances over her shoulder at Emilia’s father. There’s no judgment, merely observation. Around Grandfather, Mother always looks at Papi the way a woman might watch over a bird with a broken wing in a household of cats. “Lean on Papi.”

Emilia shakes her head and looks out the window. “I’m awake. Is this the place of gulls, yet?”

“No.” Grandfather points to the window on his left. “We have to go into those mountains for that.”

Emilia presses her face to the car window and stares out into the darkness.

The Chilean countryside is vastly different than her city home in Santiago. There is an eerie absence of life. No noise and no people. Nothing living that does not understand the dark and hiding. No light except the stars and the moon and in the distance the dark mass of mountains and snow rolling along the sky. She always thought the sky was black, the blackest black, but now she knows the only true darkness in the world is those mountains.

“Is that where the copper mines are, grandfather?”

Her mother speaks without patience. “Yes, and you know that. Be still and—”

“It is. The oldest and greatest of the Vidal family mines.” Grandfather interrupts his daughter. “The one you’ll inherit.”

Mother says nothing, watching Grandfather. The look of a sparrow watching an old hawk, waiting for him to dive and eat her young.

Grandfather doesn’t notice or, rather, he notices but is not bothered enough to let it interrupt him. “You’ll see it tomorrow. My grandfather burrowed into the earth and found the richest deposit of ore in all of Chile. He never mined half of it, because he was clever.”

“Copper dries up.” Emilia nods. “But people always want a bigger better roof over their heads.”

“Good girl.” Grandfather and Mother both say. All three of them smile but do not laugh.

The road jostles the American car and Papi snorts and groggily blinks awake. Mother turns and smiles, but Emilia frowns. It’s better when he’s asleep. She regrets thinking this because it’s unkind and Papi is nothing but kindness.

Papi gives her a goofy smile and tugs her hair, as if she is not nearly nine. His voice is large and laughing, “Hey, pretty girl. Still awake?”

There had been something special when it was only Grandfather, Mother, and herself in the stillness and the dark. Papi could not tolerate the stillness.

“No, Papi, I’m dreaming.” She points out the window. “I’m a snake swimming in the mountains.”

Grandfather, Mother, and Papi all laugh at this. Not because it’s funny, Emilia knows. Papi laughs because his daughter has said something silly in her serious way. Grandfather and Mother laugh so that Papi is not alone in his amusement.

Then Papi tickles her and Emilia is the one laughing alone, joyful. The darkness of the mountains, the knife in her dreams vanish into the warmth of her father’s big brown fingers.

Filler words to cut and replace

This is for me, mostly. I have a list of words that I personally abuse/find weak and I’m tired of losing my list and recreating it. So, I’m posting it here.  Yay!

 

 

Words to highlight and revise:

Is

Was

Ly

Ing

get

Be

Being

Seen

Seem

Saw

Feel

Felt

Hear

Heard

Smell

Smelled

Has

Had

Think

Thought

It’s

It is

 

Words to probably remove:

Probably

Only

Just

That

Very

Of the

Off of

About

Absolutely

Completely

Basically

Suddenly

All of a sudden

Said

Say

Reply

Replied

Ask

Asked

Up

Down

 

 

Replace:

Towards with toward

Backwards/backward

Upwards/upward

Downward/downward

Probably Lightening/lightning

 

 

Sunshine and Snakes

Lawless: Manlove was a best-seller on Amazon in the LGBT Anthology Category.

Get it here from Evernight

Or from Amazon

My story in Lawless is “Sunshine and Snakes”

Silent and unflinching in the face of death, Rico never met a man he couldn’t kill. Until he is instructed to murder his old cellmate and occasional lover, Burgess Accorsi. Burr is the extra son in a mob dynasty and someone keeps raising the price on his head and pressuring Rico’s family to do the job. Now Rico has to decide if the man is worth protecting or if it would be easier to just kill Burr himself.

Selection from “Sunshine and Snakes”

What I know for sure about Bruiser Accorsi couldn’t fill a Chihuahua’s nut-sack.
I know his real name is Burgess. Second-born son. Took his mother’s maiden name. He goes by Burr if you go back.
I know the Accorsi’s are the biggest family in the illicit ‘adult entertainment’ industry. High-end escorts. He likes to brag about the movie stars and politicians his girls fuck. No direct human trafficking. A financial decision, not a moral one.
I know he’s an amateur bodybuilder. I know his thick black hair is soft, not greasy. I know his eyes are the color of a sun-shot grapevine.
But I also I know he’s worth sixty thousand dollars dead.
And I’m gonna be the one to kill him.

Reviews from Goodreads:

“Any story that takes place in
prison is pretty much automatically going to be a little darker and little
dirtier than your average story. What follows was a nice mix of sweet with
suspense.”

“In Sunshine and Snakes by L.J.
Longo nothing stops a hitman from hitting his mark not even the four walls of
prison. And when his next mark happens to be the man who had shared his prison
room, he faces a dilemma. This story is a mix of suspense and steaminess.”

“I liked this one because the
chemistry between the couple was palpable. The MC was a hardcore hitman and the
mafia love interest was actually a big softie *LOL* I could see them being
together for a long, long time.”

Steampunk according to Shelley Adina

I had the great pleasure of attending some of Shelley Adina’s lectures on creative writing. In addition to being a phenomenal teacher, Shelley is an extraordinarily kind woman who will let weirdos with websites interview her. I didn’t even have to take any chickens hostage (though apparently, “The Silkie Mafia” comes armed with lightning pistols, so…)

[image error]

Shelley Adina is the author of 24 novels published by Harlequin, Warner, and Hachette, and a dozen more published by Moonshell Books, Inc., her own independent press. She writes steampunk, contemporary romance, and young adult fiction, and as Adina Senft, writes women’s fiction set among the Amish and other plain communities.  She won the Romance Writers of America RITA Award® for Best Inspirational Novel in 2005, was a finalist in 2006, and in 2009 was a Christy Award finalist.

When she’s not writing, Shelley is usually quilting, sewing historical costumes, or enjoying the garden with her flock of rescued chickens.

Her latest Magnificent Devices story comes out on the 19th and it looks like this:

 

[image error]

Here’s my full interview with Ms. Shelley Adina:

L.J.: What brought you to Steampunk?

S.A.: Would you believe the Wild Wild West TV show back in the 1960s?

L.J.: YouTube says it’s like James Bond on horseback. I can believe it.

S.A.: I loved the adventure in the Wild West, the trick gadgets, the derring-do of it all. Because I was the oldest, when we recreated the episodes after school, I always had to be James West. But I wanted to be Artemus Gordon because he got to invent the cool stuff. Carry that forward several decades, and I’m inventing cool stuff in my imagination now.

L.J.: I’ve been making people define Steampunk all month, but you’ve actually defined it in the past really succinctly as “high technology in the Victorian age,” but you write in the Regency as well. Does the era matter?

S.A.: Since the steam engine was invented by Richard Trevithick in 1807 or thereabouts, the age of steam falls both in the Regency and in the Victorian age. For writers focusing on both eras, steam matters. But what also matters is the punk element—the element of subversion of authority and fighting for independence, especially among women. While it may be easy to imagine Victorian ladies getting up to subversive activities in a time that saw the likes of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and Viscountess Amberley, the Regency had its share, too, like Ada Lovelace (born 1815), the first computer programmer. Steampunks know this, and celebrate it in the characters and art we create for ourselves.

L.J.: What do you think caused the Steampunk movement?

S.A.: In a world that’s so high-tech, where you can have relationships with people you never meet in person, the hands-on, “I made this” aspect of steampunk is very appealing. The maker communities are large and active, sharing a community build of a steam-powered motorcycle or a particularly attractive bustle design for a dress. The art of it brings like-minded people together, and there’s a real appeal in sharing a common weirdness

Steampunk: How to Feed People Underground?

So this is less to do with Steampunk in general and more to do with my story in specific. One of the primary images I was working with was a huge number of people trapped underneath another city. And one of the main problems was figuring out how they were still around after being effectively buried alive.

I turned to science for my fiction and let me tell you, the future is coming fast and it’s actually rather encouraging for those of us afraid of climate change.

Aerofarms is a real company in New Jersey; they grow salad in a warehouse.

[image error]Aerofarms

Obviously, this is hugely important stuff. The technology they use allows them to produce huge amounts of crops without soil or sunlight (aka land in New York); their website can tell you better than I could about the technology they use and how it gives reliable crops with better growing seasons using less water, and all that other really cool, hippy crap.

I’ve eaten the salad and it’s as good as salad is ever going to be for me (I’m a pizza and burger person). I think this is an awesome company and it needs all kinds of support.

However.

I grew up in farm country and I’ve worked in warehouses. So that image above is hugely jarring to me. There’s something so out-of-place about plants growing indoors that I immediately started thinking about science-fiction Dystopias. Of course, this is closer to a Utopia because more food, produced with less waste and cheaper, is the stuff of a good society.  It feels strange to us now, but this is the way we will be fed in the future, at least those of us who eat salads.

Personally, I will be eating this:

 

Clean meat, grown in a lab, with no harm to animals.

Honestly, I’d totally eat that. It looks like raw hamburger meat and I bet it tastes the same. Once they make it cheap and shape it like nuggets, I’ll never kill an animal again.

The Fantasist is a quarterly online magazine that publishes three original Fantasy novellas on the third Thursday of every third month.

And this month, while they celebrate Steampunk, one of them is mine!

[image error]Support these guys. They have good stories for free.

Tortured Heart

Denying the Alpha:Manlove is Evernight’s latest shifter anthology.

Get is here from Evernight

Or here from Amazon

My story in Denying the Alpha is “Tortured Heart”

Aza, a crow shifter, has fought hard to rise to steward of a large household and to prove himself worthy to the kindly witch who raised him. But when he finds himself trapped and tortured by a rival witch, he struggles to even remember what manner of shifter he is. He had few clues to his identity and they seem inextricably tied to Thariff, a wolf is clearly his enemy and lover.

Selection from “Tortured Heart”

Didn’t he have the decency to leave me alone?
Thariff took my shoulder, more forcefully this time. The strength in his hand, the power of his arm, radiated through me. If he didn’t want to let me go, I wouldn’t be able to go. He’d tear me apart.
Instead, he pressed me back against the bricks and leaned closer. He smiled, smoldering. “I want to kiss you.”
I met his softness with bitter cold. “I want to attend to my errand.”
“You want me to do more than kiss you.”
I did. I really, really did.
But—
I scoffed at him, disdainful of what I didn’t deserve out of habit. “How charmed your life must be that you’ve reached this advanced age without ever being told no.”
Thariff looked at me, silent and patient. Waiting. For what? His silence caused a great shout to rise in me, a guttering screech, but I swallowed it and kept my face placid. Unimpressed.
He squeezed my shoulder, inhaled deeply, and listened to my heart pounding. Because a wolf could sense those things, as certainly as I felt a thunderstorm building in my bones. Then, with dusty tartness—the trace of lemons—his mouth covered mine.
That kind of kiss could break the weak. That kind of knee-buckling passion could sweep an innocent off balance and into chaos. That kind of desire defeated good sense, good instinct, and good intention, and instructed smart men to throw away everything on the off chance they might get another kiss like it.
I was only saved from utter collapse by the basket in my hand and the bricks at my back. The basket belonged to Madame Lamrow, good and kind and deserving of my loyalty. The bricks belonged to a dirty city and only an act of violence could make me touch them.
As soon as I resisted—which was less immediate than my pride cared to admit—the wolf abandoned the kiss. He kept me pinned and stared liked parting from me would be poison. “You don’t like kissing?”
I loved kissing. I didn’t get to kiss enough. Kissing was weak and foolish and…
He bowed close, bringing his lips back to mine.
I’d be lost forever if I let him kiss me.
I turned my head only at the last moment. He paused, kissed my cheek, and then plucked a soft path toward my ear.
“You want more than kisses…” he whispered.
My face was hot against his cool lips. My body radiated desire as if every inch of my skin wept for his touch. I wanted him so much that getting what I wanted might kill me. He rubbed his face into my neck and shoulder. What cruel tenderness…
I didn’t deserve it.

Reviews from Goodreads:

“Wow. This first story is a doozy and had me completely captivated. It’s filled with magic, both light and dark, and two men who seem so disparate but in the end they both want the same thing – to be safe, to be free, and to be loved. This was a fascinating story of fantasy and love, and I was hooked.”

“I’m totally in love with Tortured Heart by LJ Longo. That’s probably my favorite of the bunch. We’re instantly in the middle of it but the author does a fantastic job of explain what’s going on so the reader isn’t lost. There are lovers betraying, twists, torture, shifters, magic, yummy sex and a really interesting plot. I would have totally given this story 5 stars by itself. (5/5)”

Steampunk: How does Clockwork…Work?

While I was writing The Scribbling Windhund, I made the inventor/terrorist very aware and a little embarrassed when he started going into technical details, so he’d cut himself short and not over explain science that I couldn’t explain. However, I do know a thing or two about clockwork mechanisms and if you’re interested, I’m going to indulge.

One of my favorite things to do when I was a kid was take apart my older sister’s wind-up music box collection and clean the insides. Partly it was fun because she couldn’t put them back together and it terrified her to see her beloved music boxes in pieces, but mostly I enjoyed it because it let me pretend to be an inventor.

I’d have my tweezers, a little copper bowl of Brasso, some q-tips, rubbing alcohol (which was absolutely not necessary and probably shouldn’t have been mixed with other chemicals), and a tiny screwdriver. Then I’d set to work dismantling the movement.

[image error]This is a “movement.” Clockwork speech for the shit inside.

The way these music boxes work is really painfully simple and extraordinarily beautiful. The round part in the upper left of the image is either called the main spring or the spiral spring. If you take it out of the case (and be very careful you don’t hurt yourself when you do), you’ll be holding a flat band of metal wound very tightly. That’s were the energy of winding the music box comes from and the longer and thinner the wire was the longer the box would play (the shorter and thicker the faster it would play). This is basically the battery of the mechanism. After you put in the energy turning the key to the music box, it tightens the spring. This is slowly unleashed and turn the wheels, gears, and eventually causes the revolving cylinder to turn. The raised bumps hit the tuned teeth of a steel comb (or lamellae) and “Music of the Night” or “Romeo and Juliet” begins to play.

I’d take great delight in carefully unscrewing the comb, and dismantling the gears, cleaning them of the little bits of dust and hair that somehow got into the device. I’d talk to myself pretending to either be inventing the thing for the first time, or defusing a bomb, or discovering a piece of old technology lost to the ages.

And of course, I’d reassemble it by the time my parents came to yell at me for messing with my sister’s toys.  They’d find nothing except a perfectly functional music box and the strong scent of rubbing alcohol and Brasso in her bedroom.

The only time I ever really got in trouble was when I took to un-making my Great Uncle Wes’ pendulum clock. The piece was much more complicated, with a lot more small moving parts (pinions, the escapement, the damned pendulum, a chiming train, and a movement train) and after I’d taken it apart I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to put it back together before someone caught me.

In the end, I stole the clock and all it’s parts and hid in the clean field (which was actually a very dirty hill) next to my Aunt and Uncle’s house. I can vividly remember skidding down the rocks and past the snake burrows to hide among the staghorn sumac. I spent the rest of the day figuring out those gears and wheels and pinions, watching the sunlight cutting through the leaves and the bars growing longer and longer as I ran out of time.

I was particularly frustrated when I realized I had put the hour hand where the minute hand needed to be and I had to take it all apart and reassemble it again.

I was there for about four hours, lying among the rocks and the grass on my belly trying to piece the thing back together. In the end, I couldn’t figure out the chiming mechanism (I suspect I lost some pieces on my flight to the field).

I don’t know if my Uncle Wes ever figured out exactly why the clock stopped chiming, but I know whenever my Aunt Annie would remark on how he ought to go and get it fixed he would just shrug and cast me a wry little smile.

It was like this clock, but not as ornate:

The Fantasist is a quarterly online magazine that publishes three original Fantasy novellas on the third Thursday of every third month.

And this month, while they celebrate Steampunk, one of them is mine!

[image error]Support these guys. They have good stories for free.

Steampunk Music: Dresden Dolls

Another one of my favorite bands is The Dresden Dolls. I find it incredible the variety of sounds these two people are able to make. According to Wikipedia, the style of music is actually Brechtian punk cabaret, but given their encouragement for all kinds of artistic expression (there are living statues, fire jugglers, and all kind of busking at their live shows) I don’t think they’d mind being showcased with some steamy punks.

 

The Fantasist is a quarterly online magazine that publishes three original Fantasy novellas on the third Thursday of every third month.

And this month, while they celebrate Steampunk, one of them is mine!

[image error]Support these guys. They have good stories for free.