Phyllis Anne Duncan (P. A. Duncan)'s Blog, page 55

A Musical Friday Fictioneers

Don’t worry; I won’t be regaling you with my lack of musical skill. Actually, I’m a pretty decent soprano, but singing my stories? Nah.

Today’s photo prompt was a poser for a non-instrument player, like me. I thought the instruments in the photo were one thing but decided to check that out with some musician friends, who set me on the correct path. I hope.

For my story I decided they were bass violins. Cellos made the word count easier to finesse, but I’m a stickler for accuracy. Any time I’ve been to live orchestral concerts, I always watch the players of stringed instruments. I play a little guitar (emphasis on “a little”), but I’m always captivated by the passion the players of stringed instruments display. I mean, watch Yo-Yo Ma. If he isn’t making love to that cello…

I hope you enjoy “Love, With Strings Attached,” and if I got the instruments wrong, close your eyes and pretend. As usual, if you can’t see the link on the title of the story, scroll to the top of the page, click on Friday Fictioneers, then select the story from the drop-down list.

Let the Querying Begin

This, the first full week of the new year, I go down a new path on the journey to publication–querying an agent. Yes, I hyperventilate a bit at the thought.

Well more than a decade ago, I thought I had a manuscript in good enough shape to query agents. Armed with my copy of Writer’s Digest’s guide to literary agents, I made a careful selection of about ten who accepted work in my genre (historical thriller), who would look at the work of unpublished authors, and whatever other criteria I thought would make us a good match.

Since these were the days before electronic submissions and Submitable, I dutifully made ten copies of the first thirty pages of the manuscript, and I wrote a query letter (based on samples I’d seen in Writer’s Digest and other writing magazines) individual to each prospective agent. I prepared ten self-addressed, stamped envelopes with the correct postage and ten envelopes for each query package, again with the correct postage. The clerks at the Kingstowne, VA, Post Office got to know me well.

The now-ex and I spent a Saturday morning stuffing said envelopes, and we were rather giddy as we trekked to the Post Office and dropped them in the mail box. The now-ex was always very supportive of my writing–seeing as how a lot of my non-fiction had bolstered his career a few times–but he was also good at bringing me down to earth when I needed it. “Don’t expect an answer from anyone on Monday, or Wednesday, or Friday,” he said. “You said yourself, these things take time.”

Good advice, which, of course, I ignored when I eagerly checked my mail box upon returning home from work each day. I think it took about two weeks for the first reply to come in–of course, blah, blah, be happy to represent you, blah, blah, blah, for a fee.

I was a novice in the getting fiction published market at that point but not so ignorant to know that agents who expect fees up front are not being ethical. I went back to the literary agent “bible,” and this particular company did not indicate that it wanted an up-front fee. I tossed the response and considered it a rejection.

Of the ten queries I sent out, I got responses from six, all rejections. Of them, only two used the SASE to return the manuscript sample. Those two arrived within a day of each other, each with a hand-scribbled “No Thanks” at the top of the page. Both had a note: one said, “Like your writing, hate the concept,” and the other said, “Love the concept, dislike your writing.” Helpful. Not.

That exercise was so ego-bending–but necessary–that it put me off querying until now. However, I look back on it and realize it happened just the way it should have. That manuscript was in no way ready for anyone’s consideration and, in fact, has gone through so many revisions and reorganizations it’s unrecognizable as the draft I thought was a gem.

Time passes, I’ve educated myself better about the querying process, and now it’s time to try again. I have, however, been to enough agent panels at writing conferences to know it’s all subjective. It all depends on the agent’s mood on a particular day, whether he or she has had a fight with a spouse or child, whether he or she has had a spate of great queries or horrible ones, and many other conditions the writer has no way of knowing.

In other words, it’s a crap shoot. An agent described it that way at a “First Pages” workshop I attended last year, and it was a relief that an agent was so honest about the process.

So, why bother? Well, because I want to give traditional publishing a good chance before I go completely over to what some would characterize as the dark side of publishing. I have published on my own three collections of short stories, mainly because I know querying a collection of short stories, and in particular genre short stories, is almost a guaranteed rejection. My novels, however, are a different matter. I want to give them a try at traditional publishing.

This year, then, will be the year of the Query Letter. I’m not going to do a ten-agent blast mailing this time, mainly because most queries are now electronic, but I am going to do a lot of careful research and select two or three at a time to query. And this time, I do have a manuscript, which has gone through two revisions and my critique group, in really good shape. It’s not the one from all those years ago, which morphed into a trilogy (I know; yikes), but it’s one I’m proud of and willing to toss into the consideration pool.

You won’t ever win the pot unless you roll the dice.

Happy New Year, Friday Fictioneers!

Happy New Writing Year!

The holidays are great, but they’re over at last. No rushing about shopping or cooking or cleaning up a mound of discarded wrapping paper. The relatives have all gone home, and no more guilt-trips about spending time with your lap top, doing that, you know, hobby thing you do, writing.

I managed to keep to my writing schedule between Thanksgiving and Christmas, but not much else, and I, for one, am glad to be getting back to the writing/revising/reading schedule I’ve become comfortable with. If I don’t, the guilt-trips will come from me.

This first Friday Fictioneers of 2013 has an apt inspiration photo, and it took me to my usual genre–the thriller. Yes, it’s a bit B-movie, a bit noir, but I hope when you read it you get that I tried to juxtapose beauty and something normal with something dark and abnormal.

That’s what usually attracts me to read fiction, the contrasts between dark and light, good and evil, the usual and the unusual. I’ve often wondered why that is. You’d think with the disruptive life I had, I’d want no surprises in my fiction. I do probably read more literary fiction than anything else, but I often need my dose of something that wrenches me from normalcy, because, well, otherwise life–and reading–would be boring.

Today’s story is “Indulgences,” and, as usual, if you don’t see the link on the title, scroll to the top of this post and click on the Friday Fictioneers tab. Then, you can select “Indulgences” from the drop-down list.

The Year of Writing Constantly

At least that’s the way it felt, but that’s a good thing.

About a year ago, I blogged about getting more serious about writing and establishing a writing work schedule that included developing new material, editing/revising WIPs, and submitting stories for publication. Here is the schedule I came up with:

Monday 0800 – 1000: Blog about writing or publish a book review on my blog

1400 – 1700: Edit/revise a novel WIP

Tuesday 0800 – 1100: Edit/revise a short story or identify a publication to submit to

1400 – 1700: Edit/revise a novel WIP

Wednesday 0900 – 1100: Blog about politics

1400 – 1700: Edit/revise a novel WIP

Thursday 0800 – 1100: Edit/revise a short story or identify a publication to submit to

1400 – 1700: Something new—a short story or a novel idea

Friday 0800 – 1000: Blog about writing, publish a book review on my blog, and/or 100-word flash fiction

1300 – 1500: Submissions—the actual act of doing so—or developing a query letter

Saturday and Sunday: Two to three hours of reading and/or writing reviews

The good news is the blogging, editing/revising, and writing original material went very well, as did the reading and reviewing. I had several reviews published, and I read approximately fifty books this year, a record for me.

The bad news is even though I submitted more times than I did the previous year–ten altogether–and I had three short stories published, I didn’t submit as much as I had planned. The rejections made me focus on whether getting short stories published in literary or genre publications was a goal I still wanted to pursue or whether getting a novel or two ready for agent query was what I wanted.

I decided the latter was where I needed to put my energy. I continued to write 100-word flash fiction for Friday Fictioneers, and I turned several of those stories into a manuscript I have submitted to a fiction chapbook contest. I also wrote slightly longer flash fiction for a writer friend’s Rory’s Story Cube Challenge. Those stories became the flash fiction collection recently published entitled Spy Flash. Late in the year, I started participating in the Flash! Friday challenge from the Shenandoah Valley Writers–two of my entries have won the weekly challenge.

I joined a fiction critique group this year and put a novel-length manuscript through the critique process. A War of Deception was an interesting piece to write. It initially started out as a fictional account of uncovering a mole in the FBI, but a subplot rose that I fleshed out more at the suggestion of the critique group members. This is a manuscript I think is in good enough shape to query to agents, and that’s my big New Year’s Writing Resolution. A second manuscript, Self-Inflicted Wounds, is before the critique group now.

I finished the rough draft of a totally new novel-length piece for National Novel Writing Month, which I’ll begin revising in the spring. A major revision to Self-Inflicted Wounds will be on tap for 2013 as well. Friday Fictioneers and Friday! Flash will continue, as will the Rory’s Story Cube Challenge–there could be a Spy Flash 2 in the future! Both the writing and the political blogs will continue, too.

And there’s always that trilogy on domestic terrorism I’ve worked on for the past fifteen years.

I didn’t put this in the writing schedule, but I resolved this year to attend more writing conferences and workshops, and six was the magic number. The Tinker Mountain Writers Workshop was the most challenging but the most rewarding. I’m starting a bit earlier for 2013, with the Roanoke Writers Conference in January.

Overall, the writing work schedule was a success, even if I didn’t adhere to it exactly as I designed it. I think if I hadn’t been flexible about it, I probably wouldn’t have accomplished as much as I did.

So, Happy New Year to all my readers and my writer friends. I’m looking forward to journeying next year with all of you down that unexpected path toward publication.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 7,500 views in 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 13 years to get that many views.

Click here to see the complete report.

The Final Friday Fictioneers of 2012

When you’re a kid who desperately wants to be grown, a year progresses with agonizing slowness–the source of saying you’re “10 1/2″ or “12 3/4.” When you reach your maturity, time seems to blaze by, much to your dismay, and you become more and more vague about your age.

The year 2012 was supposed to be the end of all things, but, well, someone really misinterpreted the Mayans. The term “loses something in translation” was in play regarding those end-of-the-world predictions. But in this week between Christmas and New Year’s we’re subjected to the “top ten” lists for the year, as well as all the other finalities implicit for the ending of that year, Friday Fictioneers included.

Friday Fictioneers in 2012 expanded upon its original iteration in 2011 and brought together a diverse community of writers, who wrote thousands of stories, each unique and worthy, and amassed more than a quarter million words. We weathered a change of command with hardly a blink of the eye because it’s the concept of Friday Fictioneers that endures–that unfettered creativity in a group of people who support and encourage each other.

What is true, though, is that this is the final Friday of 2012, and, therefore, the final Friday Fictioneers of the year. I guess it should be a really good story, eh?

I’ve always been fascinated by the lost opportunity. I’ve lost dates, job opportunities, and a lifetime of experiences when some mechanism holds me back–habit, fear, uncertainty. Whichever it is, it represents the something that will never be. There’s always a tale to be told in those moments that never happen, and I found one in this week’s story, “Habits, and Hearts, are Made to be Broken.” This story is a bit of a departure for me. Some might even call it sappy or cliched, but to me it exemplifies the lost opportunity.

If you don’t see the link on the lengthy title above, scroll to the top of this post and click on the Friday Fictioneers tab. You can then select today’s story from the drop-down menu.

Next Friday will be in a new year, one where I’m sure Friday Fictioneers will continue to grow. Happy New Year, all!

It’s That Time of Year

Whether you say Merry Christmas, Happy Yule, Happy Solstice, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Chanukah, or some other derivation, back at ya!

What with shopping, baking, wrapping presents, decorating, more shopping, and more baking, writing sometimes takes a back seat to holiday preparations. I have done my usual writing, but my editing/revising of my work has been non-existent for the past two weeks. And reading? Ferggitaboudit!

It is rather worth it, though, when you get to watch two four-year-olds and a two-year-old open their presents and hear a four-year-old say, “I’ve always wanted that!”

From the people who follow or read this blog, you’ve given me the gift of your attention all year long, and for a writer who still occasionally doubts she has something worthwhile to say, your attention to my work is something I appreciate beyond words to express.

The writing experts always say, “Write for yourself,” but if that’s your only audience you aren’t going to get far. Every writer longs for readers, and you’ve all given me that. At the same time, you’ve given me encouragement, tacit and implied. You’ve critiqued when I needed it, and you praised when I needed that, too. I write for myself, but I write for you, too, because without you, I would be a mere scribbler, not a writer.

Many of you are writers yourselves, and that makes the gift of your attention even more meaningful. We’re peers, but as writers yourselves, you get me, and vice versa. You get the rants and raves, the publishing disappointments, all the expected and unexpected things along the path to publication. We’re all on that same path, and we make each other’s journey easier.

So, best wishes for you, your families, and your writing for this holiday season. May you wake to the joy of children’s voices when they see what’s beneath the tree, or however you celebrate this time of year. And let’s do it again next year!

Happy holidays–and writing!

Ho, Ho, Ho, Friday Fictioneers!

As of 0312 this morning, it’s the winter solstice, the least amount of daylight of the year, but a cause for celebration because, after today, the intervals of daylight grow longer until we hit the summer solstice and the most amount of daylight. My people, the Celts, believed the sun stayed still for twelve days after the solstice (possibly the origin of the “12 Days of Christmas” and twelfth night celebrations), and so they dragged a huge, freaking Yule log into their roundhouses and burned it for almost two weeks. I don’t imagine much creative got done in those dark days of winter. Procreative perhaps, but I doubt if the bards came up with any new stories during the twelve days of Yule.

Good thing Friday Fictioneers happens on the first day, then, so we scribes don’t go cower by the Yule log.

Then, again, today is the pending Mayan Apocalypse, so who knows? This could be the final Friday Fictio…..

Ha! Gotcha.

Last Friday was a day from hell, and this week’s Friday Fictioneers for me, then, had to be light and airy, so with an apology to Charles Dickens, I hope you enjoy “Bah Humbug.”

If you don’t see the link on the story’s title, scroll to the top of the page and click on the Friday Fictioneers tab, then select “Bah Humbug” from the drop down list.

And happy holidays to you all!

The Next Big Thing: What I’m Working on Next

Cliff Garstang, founder of my beloved writers group, SWAG, and the author of In an Uncharted Country and What the Zhang Boys Know, tagged me in a blog chain called “The Next Big Thing.” This is not quite the same as other blog chains because you, as a writer, get to focus on a piece of your work. In a blog post you answer ten questions about a published work or a work in progress, then you “tag” two to five other writers, and they tag two to five other writers, and you get the picture. I think it’s a clever way to network with other writers and get a glimpse of their work, and you get to brag on yourself a bit.

Click here for the post from Cliff, wherein he tagged me.

And here we go!

What is the working title of your book?

A War of Deception

The title is based on a quote from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War: “All warfare is based on deception.” The Art of War is a book I’ve read or listened to many, many times, mostly on my way into work every morning in the last few years before I retired. The Art of War is as close to a bible as any book is for me.

Where did the idea come from?

It’s inspired by the real-life FBI mole named Robert Hanssen but with a slightly different twist. I’ve always been fascinated by the people who keep secrets and the people who sell them and for what reasons, and this encompasses all of that.

What genre does your book fall under?

I’d like to think of it as falling under the genre so masterfully done by John le Carre and Alan Furst, historical thriller.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Stana Katic (and that’s because everybody picks Angelina Jolie) and Viggo Mortensen for the two main characters, Mai Fisher and Alexei Bukharin. Since Hanssen has already been portrayed in the movie Breach by Chris Cooper, I don’t see why he couldn’t reprise the fictional Hanssen, who in my book is named Theodore Holt. For the sadistic chief Russian spy in the U.S., Ivan Sanel, I’d call on a Russian actor, Sergey Bezrukov. Bezrukov acts mainly in Russian films and happens to be named after the poet Sergey Esenin and portrayed him in a movie about his life.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

What should have been a simple exchange of information reveals not only a possible mole in the FBI but also an almost-forgotten event from someone’s past, which has fostered a desire for long-denied revenge.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I would like to have it represented by an agency. Barring that, I’ll look at small, independent presses, with self-publishing as a last resort.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The actual first draft took exactly thirty days because I dashed it out for National Novel Writing Month a few years ago. The current, revised draft was two additional years in the making, consisting of two major edits by me, a run through my critique group, then a final edit incorporating the critique group’s suggestions.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I may be way out of line in this comparison–in fact, I’m sure it’s just my own wishful thinking–but le Carre’s A Perfect Spy, which is about a British spy who defects to then Czechoslovakia, or Furst’s Blood of Victory, which is about a Russian emigre who pretends to be pro-Nazi while he’s secretly planning to blow up Romanian oil fields for the British Secret Service.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

As the Robert Hanssen story unfolded, it became obvious to me his motivations for selling secrets to the Russians were very different from Aldridge Ames, the CIA employee who passed secrets in almost the same timeframe. In fact, the Russians used Ames to verify Hanssen’s information and vice versa. Unlike the venal Ames, Hanssen saw his game as an intellectual exercise where he could show everyone how smart he was and a way at getting back at bosses he deemed less capable than he rather than a monetary boon. He took money, of course, but far less than Ames. Hanssen’s words upon his capture intrigued me. He smiled and said, “What took you so long?” I knew there was a story there, and I knew I wanted to put my own spin on it.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I don’t rely a lot on gadgets and spy gear, as you might see in a contemporary James Bond or standard thriller. I prefer to focus on old-fashioned tradecraft, tried and true methods of espionage, and show how they are still germane in a world of spy satellites and remote-controlled drones. Strong, female characters are important to me as well, so I have a protagonist, Mai Fisher, who can take care of herself–and others, also.

And now, those I have tagged:

Jennie Coughlin, author of Thrown Out: Stories From Exeter and the upcoming All That is Necessary. http://jenniecoughlin.wordpress.com/ Her post will appear on December 28.

Self-Censoring?

On Wednesday of last week, those of us who participate in Friday Fictioneers got our photo prompt for our 100-word stories for Friday. On Thursday evening, I drafted and edited a story and scheduled it through WordPress to publish at 0600 on Friday morning. (You can find the story, “Status Update,” by clicking on the Friday Fictioneers tab above and selecting it from the drop-down list.)

It is absolute and utter coincidence that the story, “Status Update,” is about a terrorist who is preparing a bomb to blow up a school, and it’s a poetic justice story–the terrorist blows himself up instead. I like poetic justice stories, and I like writing stories where bad people get their comeuppance. Again, this idea came into my head on Thursday, and I wrote it on Thursday, at least twenty-four hours before the horrible events in Newtown, Connecticut.

Over the weekend, several readers of this blog suggested I take the story down, and, frankly, on Friday, I did consider just that, mainly because the story involved an act of terror at a school.

Then, I remembered I don’t let murderers and terrorists dictate my behavior, and I certainly don’t let them make me censor myself.

I was a federal employee during both the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. On both occasions, we were sent home–for a day only. The following day we were back at work, doing the people’s business. That was especially important after the Oklahoma City bombing because a federal building had been attacked.

Had we not gone back to work as soon as possible after Oklahoma City, Timothy McVeigh and the anti-government types would have won; they would have shut the government down, which is what they wanted. Had we not gone back to work on September 12, 2001, al Qaeda would have won a battle, and that was not acceptable. Believe me, with the Pentagon smoldering a few miles away, it was difficult, as a supervisor, to explain to people why they had to be at work the day after, but they understood the simple concept of not letting the bad guys win.

With the cursor hovering over the “Delete” icon for that Friday Fictioneers story on Friday afternoon, I remembered that feeling of carrying on, of not letting the bad guys win. I realized if I took that story down, I’d be hiding a possibility people needed to know.

People exist who want to blow up schools because they think teachers are union thugs or the curriculum isn’t biblical enough or because they believe children are kept from praying. They’re out there right now, ranting and raving, plotting and planning, but most of them are too cowardly, thank goodness, to follow through. They are an unfortunate reality we have to face, and I’ll write more about this on my political blog on Wednesday.

For this, my writing blog, I’ll just say, no, I wasn’t prescient. Because of research, I know how people like this think, and it’s not fun or pleasant. Further, I’d never glorify people like the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in my writing, but I will make certain in my stories the bad guys get justice, poetic or otherwise.

No, I won’t stop writing about characters who carry guns to protect themselves or to achieve that justice, and, no, I won’t stop writing about people who do bad things and the bad things they do. I will keep writing about getting justice for the oppressed, the injured, the murdered.

Even in real life when justice seems elusive, in fiction you can provide it, and you can get closure. And the bad guys will always lose.