Cat Hellisen's Blog, page 21

Submitting to agents

I don’t normally do “how-to” posts because my way is not your way etc, but I’m putting this little agent-getting-of post up about my experiences (which even by now may be a little dated ) because I’ve been noticing a few posts here and there that have set off alarm bells.

So okay, my credentials. Um, I’ve had two agents. I’ve done the query mill with a host of books and learned something from my experience. And here’s what I know.

 

Have a Finished Book.

This might seem like a no-brainer but uh…you’d be surprised. Because wait times on queries can be months, people sometimes think they will have finished the book by the time the agent responds. Heard of Murphy’s Law? Yeah. Don’t do this, it just makes you look like a tit, it’s unprofessional, and WHY WHY WHY if you have an opening good enough to interest an agent, would you squander that golden opportunity by having the rest of the book be a rush-written pile of shite?

Also, finished book means not just first-drafted. it means rewritten, revised, polished and ready to go.

 

Do Your Homework.

Some people like to skip the agent hunt and submit straight to editors. You *can* do this, but I’d recommend against it. First off, you are limited in who you can send to – many publishing houses don’t accept unsolicited manuscripts, and the ones that do are certainly not putting you on a priority list.

Some other things to consider – you can submit a query to more than one agent at a time (and I strongly recommend you do – wait times being what they are) but editors in general only want you to be on sub to one place at a time. Also, agents will have more contacts within the industry, can get you a better deal than you can yourself, and are well-versed on Contract-Speak.

When you do go agent hunting, make sure you are querying the correct agent for your genre, in the format they prefer. I tend to keep a bunch of varied queries and sample pages and synopses lengths to cater for the different agents. This is the main website I used for agent-information when I was querying; Agent Query.

 

Queries Are Professional Letters.

Follow formatting guides like a boss. You do not want to get cutesy here. Keep your query professional in tone, fulfill the requirements, and make sure that you have some help with getting this one right. You have 250 words to catch someone’s interest, out of a pile of 300 other similar 250-word pitches. (I’m going to include an example of a very early query letter of mine that garnered good results. Not saying it’s a perfect query, but that it gives you an idea of what does/did work)*

 

A Good Agent Has Nothing To Hide.

This goes hand in hand with do your research. An agent (especially when you have multiple offers) understands when you ask to speak to other clients, when you ask questions about how they work, their communication style, their approach to editing manuscripts (some agents are very hands-on, other do not want to be involved in the process). Any agent that is unwilling to answer basic questions about how they work, and discourages you from speaking to other clients is raising red flags.

Research agents at places like Preditors and Editors and AbsoluteWrite’s Bewares and Background Checks. The entire forum at Absolute Write is a wealth of publishing information and I recommend reading through at least some of the stickied threads.

 

Sometimes We Divorce.

Now, I’m not saying the agent/client relationship is a marriage because that would be weird and awkward…..but, it is a relationship, and sometimes Things Just Don’t Work Out. And it’s nobody’s fault. Shit Happens. If you part ways with your agent, be upfront about it when you hit the query-rounds again, and be aware new agents are going to ask why. No matter what, don’t slag off your old agent to the ones you are querying. It’s a) plain bad form, and b) stupid. You have no idea who is friends with whom in this world.

If you have any questions that I haven’t covered here, you can ask in comments or drop me an email and I’ll add it to the post.

 

* Sample query for a very old book that while it did get me agents, never sold (and has been significantly rewritten). It’s here simply as an example of what worked in terms of layout and style and voice. I’ve removed names etc:

 

Dear [agent person]

I am seeking representation for BLACK WINGS, my completed 62,000 word

urban fantasy novel aimed at the older YA reader.

It’s Irene Kerry’s gap year and while almost all her classmates have

swanned off to Europe, she’s stuck working a sucky bar job. The only

thing that keeps her serving suburban socialites is her desire to put

herself through art school. She’s also in love with her best friend

Rain, despite knowing that he only likes boys.

Clubbing and work are slowly destroying her passion for art as Irene’s

life spirals into a crazy merry-go-round of drinking and drugging with

Rain.

Then Rain meets Caleb at their dealer’s house, and Irene watches as

she loses her best friend to an ageing goth who looks like he should

be buried at a crossroad with a stake through his heart. Knowing that

Rain is not the most emotionally stable emo-waif out there, Irene

worries that Caleb is only going to end up hurting him. What she

doesn’t know is that her friend’s new lover is a dead man; Caleb is a

trickster looking for someone to take his place in the afterlife, and

Rain is his perfect mark.

I’ve included the first five pages below as a sample, as per your guidelines.

My short story This Reflection Of Me appears in the anthology

Jabberwocky 3.

Thank you for your time.

Yours,

[name]

Contact details:

email:

tel:

Address:

 

 

.

 

Keeping Quiet When I Have Nothing To Say.

You know what?

I have nothing to blog about that isn’t a) either intensely dull stuff about the daily grind of writing, or b) intensely dull stuff about the private life of a more-or-less hermit in a seaside village. I don’t mind journaling on lj where most people either know me pretty well and have followed my ups and downs for the last 8 years or so (as I’ve done with them) or is someone I know and interact with on a personal level. On lj I’m totally okay with doing a silly meme or updating my wordcount or telling people omg it’s raining again and hey didn’t I have this exact revelation about writing about the same time last year?

In short, LJ is not a performance for me, whereas public blogging it is, and I feel dumb telling the world my wholly unoriginal thoughts on writing and life.

Blogging is supposed to be one of the tools of the Thoroughly Modern Writter, another attack on the minds of the populace who can now be wrangled and coerced into reading our books if we simply blog at them enough. I don’t know. I have nothing to say that’s going to convince someone they really want to read what I write, and certainly I don’t choose to read an author’s work because I like their blog.

With blogging I should at least be trying to say something Big and Important, and yeah, I mean we’ve gone over that. It’s not going to happen.

So basically, to sum up this mess, from now on I’ll be keeping my more general journaling stuff on LJ where it belongs, and use the Cat Hellisen blog only for important updates and notifications. It will be a relief to not feel like I’m failing at this aspect of writing and that my mundane existence is to blame.

You’ll Serve Me the Way I Wanna be Served and You’ll Like It.

Magician Marcel Oudejans linked to this article about a restaurant that has abolished the traditional gratuity and included it on the bill instead, to be split fairly among front of house and kitchen staff.

It got me thinking about my far too many years working as a waitress in the various eatery hell-holes around Cape Town (and the fucking Waterfront – I still can’t bring myself to go there unless I absolutely have to – too many negative associations) and how I saw and experienced the food service industry, as people acted out their master/slave fantasies, got to kick the dog, got to be in power for a little bit.

Waitering made me a very, very negative person, made me suspect motives, and taught me that people have two public faces – one for people, and one for “staff.” It also gave me plenty of stuff to write about when it came to human interaction, so if all my characters are horrible and selfish you know why.

But, going back to the article, some key points where I found myself nodding vigorously:

Consider also the power imbalance between tippers, who are typically male, and servers, 70 percent of whom are female…

Oh…this. THIS THIS THIS. In the one place (where I worked the longest), the owner would only hire female staff and there was a certain expectation that came from that. Making tips wasn’t so much about how well you did your job, but about how cute you were, how appealing you could be. Bat your eyelashes, be small and blonde, and even if you were the thickest fucking thing since unsliced bread, you would make money.

You were rewarded for being pretty, for being coquettishly subservient, for fulfilling your end of the master/slave contract.

People who know me IRL will know I am not small, or blonde, or cute, or flirtatiously appealing. I can do my job, but don’t ask me to simper while I do it. (Sadly, I actually became fairly good at playing the role, to the point where I was able to play helpless damsel in certain situations to get help I needed – and I still hate myself for doing it.)

The crux of the pro-tipper’s issue becomes apparent here:

These people were angry even though they had spent less than they otherwise would have, because they had been robbed of their perceived power over their server.

They want to be able to reward or punish people on a whim. And you say “but, if the service is terrible, why should I tip them?” Well, what do you normally do if a shop assistant, frex, gives bad service – you go to their boss/manager and you explain the issue. Chances are they will make it up to you in some way, or you’ll never go there again. Why is it so hard to do that in the food-industry?

What it actually boils down to is that these people are having their moment of power stripped from them.

What they want to be able to do is withhold wages from you if you fail to serve them to their expectations (which are not always reasonable expectations). They want to punish you for not being being pretty or sexy enough, for being too black, for not being subservient enough, for not flirting with them when they want their ego stroked, for not entertaining them.

Whatever.

And they don’t want that power taken away.

That’s what tipping is about to them.

So as a previously-indentured-server (:P) and as a feminist, i really really like the idea where the power of the tip is taken away from the arseholes, and instead the gratuity is included in the bill, and fairly split between all the staff.

(In reality, I know that restaurant owners and managers, being the fuckheads they are, will find a way to schnaai that money from the staff, but that’s another story.)

 

 

 

 

A Most Excellent News Kinda Day

Lots of suhweet things happening.

Firstly, the audio book for When the Sea is Rising Red is now out. The voice artist, Gemma Dawson, is absolutely perfect – I can’t explain my happiness when I heard her audition.

People are also looking forward to a companion novel to WtSiRR, and there’s no maybes about its existence. It is real, and called House of Sand and Secrets.

Sometimes playing to lose is the only way to survive the game of Houses

Trapped in an arranged marriage to lower-caste Jannik and trying to make the best of her fall from grace, Felicita is immersed in the machinations of powerful families. MallenIve is worlds apart from Felicita’s native Pelimburg, and her family name and standing will not help her here. Haunted by her past and those who died because of her, she attempts to regain her status as the scion of a once-great house.

If MallenIve’s leaders have their way, Jannik will soon have no more rights than an animal, and a union that once seemed to offer a solution to Felicita’s problems is now a liability. Felicita’s feelings are conflicted and it is all too easy to fall into the prejudiced mindset of the higher castes … until faceless corpses begin turning up on the rubbish tips, and Felicita might be the only hope Jannik’s people have.

 

And I’m going to be at Open Book Cape Town. I’ll be hosting a YA Masterclass with S.A. Partridge and Sarah Lotz (who writes YA with her daughter, as Lily Herne).  I’m also going to be included in the Fox and Raven: Readings From the Dark Side with a bunch of very cool names.

 

 

 

 

Writing in Invisible Ink

I’m sure there are writers who get critique and simply nod their heads and go, oh yes, that’s exactly the issue, I’ll fix it now.

I am, quite sadly, not one of them.

Instead, I’m a ranter of note. I scream at the pages, I analyse the number of times the reader has used certain words to describe my book, I gnash my teeth, pull at my hair, and generally weep for humanity etc. That takes about half a day.

Then I grudgingly concede on certain points while muttering bitterly into my gin, until, finally, I accept that I’ll have to do even the changes I hate if I want to ever sell a book. Within a week I’m pretty much resigned to “oh, fuck it, I’ll do whatever you want, just point me at things and say kill.”

Until the next round of notes of course…

This time, however, something was bugging me. I kept getting the same feedback about a certain thing and I just couldn’t see wtf people were talking about. I spoke to The Boy (because he’s saying the same thing) and after we talked and I tried to explain why I disagreed so much,  I *finally* clicked as to why I was getting so upset by these “MC is passive” critiques.

Because he isn’t. In my head.

And it amazes me that I can be so blind to the difference between what’s in my head and what I’ve actually put down on the page. But the sad reality is just because I know why a character is doing something, if I don’t tell the reader why, it’s not like they can mindread it out of my brain. The Boy asked, “Why is he being so secretive about his plans if we’re in first person and in his head?”

And I’m all, “He’s not secretive, it’s just not interesting sitting there describing all your plans to yourself, and oh my god how boring would that be to read and it would just be so dull and I don’t see why it’s so important to spell all this shit out and oh shit it’s all in my head and not in the book, isn’t it?” (<<

Anyway, lol me, and thank goodness for beta readers, eh?

So yeah, raise a glass for the people who keep patiently bringing you to the puddle of piss that is your manuscript and whacking your nose until the message sinks in, for they are gold.

 

 

Wait…you say these people are real?

So in a fit of foolishness some time back, I purchased a membership for World Fantasy Con in Brighton this year.

Foolishness because a) have you *seen* the Rand/Pound exchange rate? and b) have you seen the Rand/Pound exchange rate?

There are c’s and d’s and e’s, of course, things like..who will Spawn-and-house-and-pet-sit? What if the plane crashes? Omg, other people, I am terrible around other people, what was I thinking?

But there are plusses, like, hey, this is my first trip overseas in like…15 years. Okay. This is my second trip overseas. Hush. This will be The Boy’s first trip overseas ever and he is going to have such an awesome time. I am going to see people I only ever get to chat with online.

And that’s the part that just made me sit back and go whoaaaah. Because I’m looking at the membership list and like…wow. Some of those names are people I have followed on LJ for almost a decade? And…they’re real. That’s bizarre. The world is bizarre. I need a lie down.

Anyway, if you’re going and you see me, say hi, because I will probably be terrified inside and feeling completely lost and out of my depth.

 

 

50 first lines

Some of my friends started doing a 50 first lines thing last night while I was asleep (wooh time zones!) and I wanted to join in, but since they’re now asleep (wooh time zones!), I can only guess what the rules were.

Using my amazing powers of deduction, I think we’re meant to write 50 first lines of 50 stories.

This is a cool idea, I thought, and opened up a new document.

And hour later, with 10 lines, I went: this is a hard idea. But fun.

I’ll keep adding to them because I’m hoping all this random stuff will spark something today, but so far I have this, and I can see some serious potential in one.

 

Grifter’s Tongue is a long strip of land – a sand bar, really – where the fur seals gather in their hundreds, lying in wait for the annual story-telling that will choose them a summer Queen.
The Great Angels in the museum had not moved for years, so when display #394 disappeared, everyone assumed it had been stolen.
The new head was a good fit.
The house was covered with brown paper, and sounded like a drum full of bees.
Emmeline opened the tail-box and ran her fingers along the desiccated remains of her infant limb.
Bumblers never stopped, not even for angels in the road, which made them the only choice for taking caravans through the desert of one million nameless gods.
Falling is the fastest way to get anywhere, as all dreamers know, even when they forget.
It was the third time Alfred had to get his smartphone exorcised, and this time he was going diy – he had the salt, a toothpick crucifix, and some step-by-step Latin ritual he’d downloaded from Instructables.
We were teeth, and that was all we were supposed to remember when she sent us to war.
Even when I led the boy away from his body, his hand was curiously warm in mine.

The wyrms lie in dank terrariums and shed empty papery skins

Morning spent fixing the Hobverse selkie story, A Sun-Bright Prison.

I had a long, hard think about subbing. I tend not to write short stories, so choosing not to sub them feels a bit like I’m giving up before I even begin. I had a look at it and I think it’s too intimately connected to the Hobverse mythos. I dunno, perhaps I’m wrong and it stands alone fine. It’s very hard to judge one’s own work.

Also, it’s pretty much a coming of age story and I think those sort of get default lumped into YA? Again, I don’t know. Publishing is strange and I don’t really understand it. I’m not sure anyone does, actually.

But I’m taking a break from reading novels. At the moment it’s non-fic and short stories to season them, which is how I stumbled across the story Mulberry Boys, by Margo Lanagan. I really enjoyed it, so if you’re in the mood for a short story, here you go:

On a less fictitious note, this article on Hijab Tourism articulated for me a lot of things I had felt uncomfortable with but couldn’t quite pinpoint what about them was bugging me.

(image from wikipedia)

Growing things

I am bad at keeping a veggie garden. Bad. One year in Joburg I had a pretty good haul but that seemed to have been a fluke. It was also a fluke for which I was extremely grateful as it was the year where we often only had food if it came from the garden.

Still, there’s nothing quite like being a writer to make you shrug off failure and keep going in the face of insurmountable odds and the pitying stares of your relatives and acquaintances. So, apply writer-logic to gardening and carry on regardless.

(Oh dear, now The Beautiful South’s Good as Gold (Stupid as Mud) is stuck in my head)

 

Anyway, on to my exciting garden adventures! It seems that when I try to grow actual things they do not like to live. It’s like they die on purpose because they hate me or something.

Like these pissed-off lettuces. I think the cat shat on them actually. *sadface*

Contrast this with the tangle of giant things I never planted, never look at, and occasionally mow over in a fit of spite. It is mid-winter in the cape, drizzly and fairly nippy (by my standards, so shut up, Canada), and we have the first bananas appearing. Bananas, I ask you.

If I apply garden logic to writing, I think I’m meant to be writing bananas instead of lettuce. There’s a message in there somewhere.

Roll the Die

So…I’m pretty much terrible when it comes to finishing books. I have a bunch of half-written manuscripts that need attention and since I’m almost done with Three Dog Dreaming, it’s time to choose my next victim.

 

With no other information beyond the first few lines, which should I tackle next:

 

WiP 1:

None of them had died yet. Not like Louise’s father who had become a falling comet, his biomagic-wings reduced to burning tails. Or perhaps that’s just how the newsmachine wanted them to imagine his glorious end.

 

WiP 2:

White feathers on the broken parquet floor. White feathers, blown in from outside. They could be from a piebald pigeon or a lost gull, only they’re too bright and unreal. I crouch down, touch my fingertip to one. Gods.

WiP 3:

The gallery was a long narrow room of old stones crudely cemented together. The girls had hung paintings from the rails and made the building’s lack of windows part of its stifling charm. A small bar ran part way down the right wall, then stopped. Someone had set up tables, had covered them with the kind of little finger foods meant to look classy, but were rather obviously limited by budget.

WiP 4:

Walk slower. Make it seem like you’re gradually slowing down and it’s totally random and has nothing to do with the weird guy sauntering along behind you.

Also, George, stop talking to yourself.