Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 48

Starbleached 3 update and news

I have decided the title is The Overseer's Own or some permutation thereof.

Editing is going S.L.O.W.L.Y. But it is going. I will have the sample chapters posted by the end of the week. I promise. I think part of what is taking forever is getting the non-human POV to be both not human and readable. Like I said, it's Bryan's book and I love it, but things are going to be a lot more fun when he grows up a little bit.

Another problem is I have no music for it.

This is the one place where I feel a little flakey. I am HARD into music when I write. I have a long, long LONG LONG soundtrack for Exiles. To the point where I know the music I'd use for my dream book trailer (and I know the company I have to sign up with to get it. I just don't know how much it would cost) and it's the track I listen to when I CANNOT get into a writing mood. But the stuff that works for a fantasy book doesn't work for a sci-fi book, so I'm kind of stuck listening to Daft Punk, which doesn't work, or something else that...well, doesn't work.

And I am still very very tired from Spring Break. Double capacity, half the staff=very tired CW.

So, my loyal book readers, can I be a pest for a sec? If y'all are actively looking forward to this book, please let me know. I'd really appreciate knowing that I'm not playing Sisyphus for JUST my own vanity.

It is perfectly acceptable to ignore that request because I know I'm being a pest. I'm just tired.

Anyhoo, there's your status update. I might post cover sketches a bit later if I get that kind of bored.

CERULIAN SINS--Chapter 2-3

Well, fuck. Vertigo came back this evening. Not a good sign. Google fu still turns up a consistant result of YOU ARE NOT EATING RIGHT IDIOT EAT MORE MAGNESIUM THINGS which is basically all the things in sushi+edamame. So hopefully I can avoid the "are straight lines supposed to be this hard?" stage of vertigo. Right now we're still at the "gee I feel like the floor is moving, maybe" stage.

What I don't want is for this to be a lifetime stress reaction thing. Because I get a lot of stress and yeah, I don't eat right. At least not when it's American food. I crave food from other countries more than I do stuff from the states. Probably because it hasn't been processed through six different kinds of machine before they put it in the microwave packet.

(...did you know they make nukable edamame? They do. That was the happiest part of last week)

Right. Book review. Yeah, don't get me started talking about food. I love food.


Chapter two opens with a cematery where one is not allowed to plant flowers.

Okay. That would be the deal breaker for me. Actually the deal breaker is "Cemetery" because I want to be cremated and turned into something you can drop onto a distressed coral reef, because reefs are the awesomest thing on the planet and I'd kind of like my final memorial to be the entire Gulf of Mexico.

Anita rants about how unfeeling this is, and I kind of like it too. The whole point of a cemetery is not to make the dead person feel good. It is to make the still living feel better. (...while in scuba gear and watching out for anemones.) We then find out that the reason why we are here has nothing whatsoever to do with the preceeding chapter. Anita has to raise a dead person because his insurance wants to make sure that he died in an accident and didn't suicide.

...And this is why I actually wanted to read this series in the first place.

But...uh, the fail kicks in real fast.

There were three groups of cars in the cemetery. Two of the groups were at least fifty feet apart because both Mrs. Bennington and Fidelis’s head lawyer, Arthur Conroy, had restraining orders against each other.

HOW NASTY DID THIS FIGHT GET? Seriously, there is this implied aura of crazy there that I just don't understand. You don't get restraining orders because of nasty things said in court. Restraining orders are obtained once you are shot at and/or discover the person pissing enthusiastically on your geraniums.

Anyhoo, we meet Insurance Lawyers and get a rant about how nasty insurance companies are. I am sensing a lot of OOC hate for insurance people. Anita then interacts with Insurance Lawyer bodyguards, because we need to establish muscle/cannon fodder and indicate who Anita will be having pissing contests with today.

And you know, I went over that "implied aura of crazy" paragraph three times to remove any implication that LKH had the woman as the source of the crazy, because I wanted to give her credit. Apparently, this is entirely undeserved:

I heard raised voices, one of them a woman. Shit.

Yep. The wife of the dead due punched the lawyer, who "bitch slapped" (LKH's words. Not mine) her back, and it took baliffs to seperate them. Anita wanted her to be kept home because the woman couldn't be kept under control.

And then LKH mananges to piss me off on every single level.

I called her Mrs. Bennington at her insistence. When I’d referred to her as Ms. Bennington, she’d nearly bitten my head off. She was not one of your liberated women. She liked being a wife and mother. I was glad for her, it meant more freedom for the rest of us.

Fuck you. Seriously. Fuck you. You can't be a wife and mother AND be a liberated woman? You can't like a neat house without being June fucking Cleaver? And chaining a woman to matrimony allows more freedom for the rest of you? WHAT. THE ACTUAL. FUCK. ARE YOU THINKING. I read this less as "not a liberated woman" and more as "Woman whose fucking husband HAS DIED UNEXPECTEDLY AND HORRIBLY."

So Anita goes over and is nice to the cops while Mrs. Bennington accuses Anita of being on the insurance company's payroll and that she will force the dead man to lie. Except that the dead can't lie because Plot.

 Mrs. B goes over to scream at Anita. A cop blocks her. She assaults the cop. The cop makes several threats. This is all played as being unreasonable on her part. You don't believe me?

“Striking a police officer is considered a crime, Mrs. Bennington,” he said in that deep voice.

 Even by moonlight you could see the astonishment on her face, as if somehow she hadn’t quite realized any of the rules applied to her. The realization seemed to take a lot of the wind out of her. She settled back and let her cadre of dark-suited lawyers lead her a little away from the nice police officer. 

I was the only one close enough to hear him say, “If she’d been my wife, I’d have shot myself too.”

 I laughed, I couldn’t help it.

 Again: Played as if all the bad behavior was Mrs. Bennington's. Folks, Captive of Gor was more fucking respectful of women. Seriously. What did Femininity do to LKH?

Oh
Anita and the cop go over into a corner to continue shitting all over a woman whose husband has died. This includes calling her "that crazy bitch" and implying that she deserves to be left in the cold for being awful. Because somebody whose husband dies horribly and who is then subjected to a long and ugly legal battle reacting a little emotionally is far worse than implying that her husband killed himself because of her.

 In the end they conclude that Mrs. B will go ballistic if her hubby says he committed suicide and that it's a damn shame nobody will be allowed to shoot her when it happens.

Everybody in this book is officially terrible.

And then Anita and the cop start flirting. And the chapter ends.

Okay, fuck it. We're getting the damned Zombie out of the ground before I go to bed.

Anita gets her things out. For once she is actively practical about how she keeps her stuff around. It's in a duffel bag. Also, we have not been subjected to a clothes description yet. I hope I'm not speaking too soon. We also get a description of what Zombie Raising requires. There is a rosemary based ointment that Anita doesn't use anymore because she's raised without it. Anita only really needs steel, salt and blood to raise corpses.

And...oh, fuck. Yeah, she's cutting herself to get the blood. She used to use chickens but her Wiccan teacher didn't like that part. Uh...yeah. Let's just say that with my background, the combo of magic and self-harm squicks me out a bit. (part of why I branched out spiritually was to get the SI stuff under control.) It's not a trigger for me, but it's more like an uuhhhh...really? 

 Anyway, Anita has damaged herself so much that she's decided to go back to chickens. The cuts hurt and that slows her down while she's shooting.

Uh. Um...yeah. I...uh, do not think that slicing up your left arm every night would work that way. Nobody ever caught me limping is what I'm saying.

Anyhoo, Anita finds an unbandaged part of her body, makes it require eventual bandage application, and then walks the circle letting her hand drip blood on the ground. Magic things happen.  The zombie comes up and it is established that because Anita isn't killing things to make the Zombie come up, he's all dead and drippy looking. Anita lets him drink from her bleeding finger so that he will talk.

His wife is over in a corner having hysterics. Because, you know, us flighty females do that.

Mr. B quickly tells the assembled lawyers, legal people and whatnot that yes, he shot himself, but it was an awful accident because he's not dumb enough to commit suicide. The lawyers are pissed. Mr and Mrs. B share a last touching goodbye, in which Mr. B calls her "my little hell cat." Anita uncasts her magic circle, the lawyers argue, and then Asher shows up and apparently this is the signal for all the cops to lose their minds and bring out the guns.

End of chapter.

Laurel K Hamilton it is...you pick which one!

I am concerned. No sarcasm, folks. Last november I had a very troubling bout of vertigo.My theory is that it was induced by a severe stress/dietary deficiency due to my going through very stressful workday (The Diwali Party will live in infamy) and not eating my usual two to three plates of sushi a week. Under normal circumstances I would call that silly to the point of stupid, but I spent three weeks feeling like the universe was rolling and it went away fast after I ate a couple spicy shrimp-and-tuna rolls. As in I went from feeling like I'd puke from sitting down to feeling normal within twenty four hours. It was weird.

Well...it might be back. I visited a friend on their boat today (living on the coast FTW) and have spent all day feeling slightly...off. Like I've never actually gotten off their boat. Hopefully it is just Spring Break Hangover (...god don't I wish it was the traditional kind) and it will be gone by tomorrow. Just in case it isn't, though, I will be dropping by Wal-Mart for sushi making supplies. I will abso-fucking-lutely indulge in hyper-superstituous paranoia when it involves this shit. The only issue I have is if the Mystery Dietary Deficiency is present in the tuna, I am SOL because I do not make sushi with grocery store fish. What bothers me is I might have cut down a little bit, due to last week sucking, but I didn't stop. I had two sushi meals, and I was constantly snacking on nuked edamame (Wal mart carries it. Who knew?) until I ran out on Saturday. So if the Vertigo from Hell is back, and it IS Mystery Dietary Deficiency related? I'm worried. And ODing on sushi, edamame and miso this week, because I am NOT going through that shit again.

Also: Taking magnesium pills. That's my Obvious Culprit for the Mystery Dietary Deficiency. I attempted google-fu to see if stress can trigger a magnesium deficiency and the result was a resounding NO SHIT. So I'm going to get up right now to take pills. BRB.

Okay. Pills consumed. But Folks? If the Vertigo from Hell rears its ugly head again? Release date gets pushed back. This shit was not fun the first time, and having a vague idea of how to make it go away does not equal actually being able to make it go away.

So. Majority rules, and it will be more LKH. But will it be Anita Blake eleven or Merry Gentry three?

In the interest of fairness, let's review the first chapters of each and go on from there. :D


The interesting thing about Cerulian Sins is, it's actually the book that got me interested in the Anita Blake series in the first place. My parents went through a VERY straight-laced, Good Christian, Magic-is-evil phase when I was very young. I remember clearly being told that I could not borrow a book from the library (Dove Isabeau, by Jane Yolen) because of the red dragon on the cover.

Naturally this triggered a life-long obsession with finding this book after the Magic=Evil phase wore off, which I finally solved last year because Internet (and if you like picture books and good fantasy and can live with a story only twenty pages long, Dove Isabeau is worth hunting down. It's pretty).


Anyhoo, reading this book kind of takes me back immediately to the first time I read it. Not so much because this book is awesome, but more because that was 2004 and my life was the definition of "fucked up" at the time. So yes, folks. I first encountered Anita Blake in the pulp of a Houston Krogers, waiting for my grandmother to pick out another John Patterson book (Why we could not like Jeffery Deaver like any good soul is beyond me, but we could not) (Oh, and you think LKH is a waste of paper?)

CS opens with Anita meeting a wholly unremarkable man. And also drinking coffee out of a completely unacceptable coffee mug:

I took a sip from my coffee mug with the motto, “If you slip me decaf, I’ll rip your head off.”

One...that's not funny. Google fu finds many funny-ish anti-decaf slogans, the simplest of which is "decaf sucks". So LKH can't even make an effort to make the coffee cups funny anymore. Ah, Sigmund, how we miss thee.

Two...you can get fired for having shit like that out where customers can see it. Seriously. It's like wearing a t-shirt saying "Don't interrupt me while I'm ignoring you." (guy at work wore that on his fourth day. He did not have a fifth. Admittedly, he had other strikes against him) You don't have threatening things around customers. You just don't.

Anyhoo, the decaf is part of an interoffice shenanigans story involving her boss switching all the coffees for decaf and not telling anybody. Apparently this =having mono at Anita's office.

(Fun restaurant fact: Asking for coffee at thirty minutes till close means you get whatever is in the pot. Usually this means decaf. Also? Ordering french roast to counter act the three vodkas you had with dinner and the shot of drambuie you just ordered to go with the coffee? Yeah, that's not going to work.)

None of this is interesting. Why did I find this book facinating enough to keep reading at the Krogers? Because it mentioned zombies and because I'd been living on a steady diet of James Patterson and The Amazing Race by that point (AKA having to live with grandma). Right.

Nondescript Dude, AKA Mr. Harlan (...Ellison, douchebag extraordinare) wants Anita to raise an ancestor. Apparently he has said this before the book started, because Anita is all "So you said" an things devolve into one of those trademark Anita Blake pissing contests in record time. We also get the Litany of Scars. And then a lot of rambling about wheither or not he actually has a gun. The pissing contest continues until both of them are avoiding each other's questions, and are simultaneously getting ready to pull guns on each other.

It is sad when you spend all day editing books in front of docu-dramas about gangsters and this makes that life look sane. For Christ's sake, Anita, he's avoiding your question. He's only getting into position for his gun because you are OBVIOUSLY ready to draw yours. Calm the fuck down.

Anyhoo, he reveals that he is a hitman who still wants to raise his ancestor.

A name might help. You know. Because we have to find a grave. Which is what Anita could have said instead of being all "Because I want you to tell me" and getting gun happy. And with his being a PAID FUCKING MURDERER being out in the open, suddenly Anita and Mr. Harlan are all buddy buddy.

That doesn't mean the pissing contest stops. Anita demands more info, Harlan reveals that Relative is over 200 years old, which would require a human sacrifice, only Anita is special enough to not have to kill a human sacrifice to raise that zombie, because Plot, I guess.

Anyhoo, Harlan thinks his ancestor lied when he came to the states and gave a false name. Harlan wants to track his ancestry back into Europe, so he wants to summon the zombie, have him give his name, and then put him to bed.

And he implied that he was willing to have a stranger killed to raise said zombie.

I smell bullshit. How does Anita react?

“It sounds reasonable enough.”

Direct. Fucking. Quote. Folks, he just literally said and I quote: “I heard an animator could raise almost anything, if they were willing to do a human sacrifice.” and when Anita said she could do it without an extra dead body being involved he said and I also quote: His eyes widened, the closest to surprise that he’d shown. “You can raise a nearly two-hundred-year-old corpse without a human sacrifice?” and then strongly implied that he figured Anita had been murdering people for years. And then less than a fucking page later Anita is swallowing this bullshit about tracking the family tree back to europe?



And then when she tells him that she can't see him until Wednesday or Thursday, he exposits that Tuesday is the full moon and accuses her of being a shifter.




Laurel, there are ways to work exposition into your chapters, but having Random Dude pull 'fo out of his ass that he shouldn't have in the first place? That isn't one of them.

What follows is a mountain of info-dumping and BAD punctuation that I don't want to touch. Also, Richard has been reduced from "Former fiancee and love of live" to "On-again-off-again-honey bun."

GAG. ME.

Anyhoo, the pissing contest somehow continues even though they've made an appointment to meet on Wednesday night, and cards are exchanged. There is "I am a big bad killer" expository stuff and "he is a big bad killer" expository stuff and I really hope to God this is the last time we see this moron, but I have a bad feeling the (ass end of the) book will involve him and Anita drawing down and confronting their demons together, like some kind of gun-fueled Sociopathics Anonymous meeting.

The chapter ends.

Now. For the other alternative.

I stopped reading Merry Gentry after the second book and I have no idea what the fuck happens next. I stopped reading because I didn't care, I'd realized that LKH was a gigantic circle-jerk hemisphere and the reader was on the end getting the least attention, and I had better things to do. So in reality the choices here are really opposite ends of the spectrum for me.

Seduced By Moonlight... Yeah. We stopped trying, didn't we?


Anyhoo, I think we can safely categorize Anita Blake as the "Trying" series. That opening could use some help (namely, better characters) but it was interesting in its way. This one, on the other hand, opens with Doyle laying beside the pool while pretty water rainbows dance over his skin.

Yep. Not kidding.

He lay at the edge of the pool, wearing almost nothing. Sunlight glittered across the blue, blue water of the pool. The light broke in a jagged dance across his body, as if some invisible hand stirred the light, turning it into a dozen tiny spotlights that coaxed Doyle’s dark body into colors I’d never known his skin could hold.

At least it isn't hair and garnets this time. And...oh fuck. OH FUCK. Okay, this is just my pet peeve because I've been formating ebooks for six months in a rather half-assed way, but guys? They put LESS effort into formatting this book than LKH did writing it.

Fast rule of thumb: Paragraph indents OR a space seperating paragraphs. DO NOT USE BOTH.

And bullshit if you argue this book came out in 04. Somebody could have come through and fixed it since then.

And it doesn't take long for LKH to racefail.

He wasn’t black the way a human being is black, but more the way a dog is black.

SECOND. FUCKING. PARAGRAPH.

Anyhoo, it takes three paragraphs for Merry to stop describing Doyle and move on to describing the rush to get her pregnant. The words "Cannibalistic orgy" are used, but are sadly only applied to how the tabloids reacted to More Famous Than Elvis Merry living in LA.

And then we get Repeated Sentence The First:

They can say that the Seelie Court is a beautiful place, but I learned that my blood is just as red on white marble as it is on black.

This was in Divine Misdemenors, and I'm pretty sure it was in whatever the first book was called. I really hate that sentence, is what I'm saying. And it doesn't take long for us to have the second repeated sentence of the series:

The eyes would be welcome in the Seelie Court, but not the hair. It’s blood auburn, sidhe scarlet, if you go to a good salon and get the dye job. It’s not auburn, and it’s not human red. It’s as if you took good red garnets and spun the jewels out into hair.

Spinning. Does not work. That way.

In fact, I think LKH has decided that the words in this book need to be beaten to death. All of them. Every single word. The repetition is having that effect here.

 After we get "Doyle is pretty" for a couple more paragraphs, we move on to "Rhys is pretty."

And then we find out that Rhys came to get his picture taken by the tabloids stark raving naked.

...Okay, I'm going to give it to him.



Stick me in front of the press like that, I'd fuck with them too.

And then they start making out so the tabloids will have a good show.

Because this absolutely works in real life.

And...uh...things are actually getting kind of steamy. There are references to mouths being sweet and other things tasting just as  sweet. And then this happens:

I didn’t have time to protest, or even decide if I was going to. The helicopter cleared the trees, and that was how they found us. Rhys with his face buried in my groin, his legs bent at the knees, feet kicking slightly over his bare ass, like a child with a piece of good candy.

STOP. COMPARING. SEX. TO FOOD. AND STOP USING CHILD LIKE IMAGRY IN YOUR SEX SCENES FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. STOP. JUST STOP.

Chapter ends with Doyle and Rhys rushing Merry inside while Frost stands guard. Merry says, basicially, "Any day nobody's trying to kill you is a good day" and the chapter ends.

Make your choice my loyal blog readers. There can be only one.

Starbleached=EPUB+Deviantart art sale TOMORROW

IT IS MARCH 18TH AT LAST.

Okay, so most of ya'll won't know (or care) why today is something I have been waiting for, so here it is: STARBLEACHED IS NO LONGER ENROLLED IN KDP SELECT.

What does that mean?

This. This is what it means. Starbleached is now an epub that you can get your hands on tonight. And Planet Bob is finally, finally, FINALLY on Barnes and Noble. So if you have been waiting on pins and needles to get a copy? GO GET ONE NOW.

Also, I updated the covers with shiny sci-fi text. Shinier than before, anyway. Take a gander:

Text effects. They are a bitch to do right, but damn.

...I think Spring Break broke Robot Susan. I need to get that fixed too.

Which brings me to the big Thing this month.

Tomorrow I am running a promotion on Deviant art. It's not a big thing, but it is A thing. So if you have a DA account, head on over to this page and fav things. And of course, if you haven't bought anything of mine, you have a DA account and you have extra points lying around that you have no plans to use anytime soon, buy a copy of whatever you like. Each file has epub, kindle and an HTML file because, shocking as this might sound, not everybody has an e-reader. 

And DA files will have a bonus or two thrown in for good measure, because the seller/host split is fucking sweet (20/80 split. I will happily trade amazon rankings nobody will ever actually give a shit about to keep that much of my sales).

I am also willing to discuss paypal sales here on the blog. DISCUSS. I am not ready to offer it yet because I have a feeling both doing it and doing the taxes on it will be almost as big of a pain as doing text effects was (...and, apparently, as getting the various websites to update the fucking covers is going to be, too.) 

(...I am no longer among those people. My ma bought me a Kindle fire. I am loving it.) 

So. Recap. STARBLEACHED IS NOW ON SMASHWORDS, BARNES AND NOBLE AND DEVIANTART. And it will hit Diesel and Kobo next week. Maybe. Shiny covers are shiny and I am running a big promotion over on DA, I would like your help.

(Seriously. Favs are all I ask for. Favs. Lots of favs.)

Caress of Twilight--We're finishing this shit.

So. I woke up at seven AM on sunday, and didn't see my house again until ten forty-five.

This is why there have been no posts.

This is all I will say on the matter.

Also: I AM FINISHING THIS SHIT TONIGHT SO HELP ME GOD. Which means we need to pick out something else to be snarky about. Options? Options:

1. We can make CW read something that she actually loves and tear it to pieces.
2. Eternal Prey. Men posessed by the shapeshifting ghosts of dead dinosaurs, mayan prophesy misued badly and I swear to god cross my heart and hope to die, a Bella Swan Clone.
3. The Caterpillar's Question. Which should come with a trigger warning for basically everything, in part because it is written by Piers Anthony.
4. I would say "the gap series" but its general awfulness would probably break the blog. But I am saying "The Gap Series" anyway, sans the first book. Because I am never reading that book again. EVER.
 5. More LKH
6. More Gor
7. More L. Ron Hubbard.

YOU DECIDE.

So. The end of the book opens with exciting wall scailing, which is derailed by this:

I was helped down into a narrow lane that was planted so thickly with dark green camellias that they formed a second wall to nearly hide the house in front of us. It wasn’t the right time of year for blooming, so they were just tall bushes with thick, waxy leaves. I knew exactly how the leaves felt because Lucy and Galen both made me stand in the damn shrubs. I could come along, but they were both going to make sure I didn’t get to do anything.

I just finished Frost Burned, the seventh Mercy Thompson book. I didn't hate it, but I didn't like it either. Pasted on thematic resolution and a couple of other issues. But you know what? for all that Mercy stood over in the shadows and waited for the big bad to literally fall on her magic sword? She smiled and nodded at all the overprotectives telling her to stay out of the fight and then told them to go fuck themselves.

And then the Nameless reveals itself, and LKH was obviously re-reading her old books for this one, because you remember that big zombie/Katamari Damancy thing from the second Anita Blake book? That's the Nameless. Only its got magic to point at you and Lovecraft sanity rolls. Which two of the cops fail.

Apparently the cure for loss of sanity in this universe is to repeat that slapping scene from Airplane, only instead of saying "Everything's going to be alright" while a nun stands behind you with a pipe wrench in hand, you call the screaming, panicked person a son of a bitch.

Not kidding:

“Son of a bitch,” slap, “son of a bitch,” slap  …   until the screaming officer sat down on the grass and hid his face, whimpering.

Speaking of Lovecraftian nightmares, be glad I did not post that whole paragraph. The punctuation alone...

Anyhoo, Merry describes the thing as "indescribable", only with a lot of moving mouths and tenticles and assorted body parts.

The police open fire, managing to kill only their own panicked people in the process. Yes, folks. The police in this universe are not smart enough to pull their obviously insane personell out of the line of fire before they start shooting at things.

Maeve Reed shows up with Gordon. Note: she doesn't really have to ask what's going on. Taranis sent it, everybody knows it, Lucy's radioed for a helicopter.

Rhys throws his axe at the monster's eye, Galen tells Merry to get out of the fight, and the chapter ends.

And Merry...actually runs after Galen at the start of the next chapter. The thing is batting her men around like they're little plastic army figures, and while they've gotten the Magical Blade of the Month into the thing, it isn't slowing it down.

And then it knocks Nicca out of the fight and barrels down on Galen, and Merry pulls Magical Power B directly out of her ass. 

 See, she touches the Nameless's blood, and the blood sinks into her, and she discovers she literally has the power to make people bleed to death through a papercut if she wants to.

I shrieked in pain, and Kitto touched me, tried to help. He yelled and let go of me, staggered back. The front of his T-shirt bloomed red, fresh blood. He clawed at his shirt, raised enough for me to see the marks of my nails spilling blood everywhere, worse, so much worse than the original injury...Doyle had told me once that I would have a second hand of power, but there was no way of knowing when it would manifest or what it would be.

Yeah. Can we spell Convenient here, kids? And then we almost oust Kitto from "Most disturbing thing ever" with this description:

I pointed my left hand toward the creature, palm out, and thought, not the word blood but of blood. I thought about the taste of it, salty, metallic; the feel of it fresh and almost scalding hot in large doses, the way it thickened when it cooled. I thought of the smell of blood— that neck-ruffling scent— and the way enough of it freshly spilled always smelled like meat, like raw hamburger.

Uh...HOW WOULD WE KNOW ALL THIS? Also: Neck ruffling. Are we talking Elizabethian or that spitty dinosaur from Jurassic Park here?

Merry walks towards the Nameless. End of chapter. Next chapter: The Nameless starts bleeding.

Wow. Big surprise.

It realizes that Merry can make it hurt, so it slowly oozes towards her.

VERY slowly. Like B-movie blob monster slow. When they turned on the heat lamp to make the jell-o ooze they only put in a 50 watt bulb.

Merry then decides she doesn't just want the thing to bleed, she wants it to die. And she causes psychic wounding, somehow, that makes it bleed faster and she gets all happy and peaceful and the language reminds me of every S/I session I ever had. Yeah, I just remembered why "trigger warnings" should exist. It is not for "Oh, I mentioned that I used to do this". It's for shit like this:

The more it bled, the calmer I became. A stillness filled my body, almost a peacefulness. I knelt in the growing spread of blood, watching the thing quiver toward me, and I had no fear.

Belated trigger warning.

Anyway, the thing reaches for her VERY. SLOWLY....and then it explodes into a splashy rush of monster blood, because we haven't been gross enough in this book yet, I guess.

Next chapter...Uh...acid?

Magic was everywhere, streaming through the air like multicolored fireworks, flying around us in flocks of fantastic birds that never knew mortal sky. Entire forests rose and fell before our eyes. The dead rose and walked and faded. It was like watching someone else’s dreams and nightmares march through the bright California sunshine.

Seriously. Did we suddenly cross over into Fear and Loathing in Rivendell here? Tell me that does not read like Hunter S. Thompston's morning halucination.

(Just the morning one. He's got a different one reserved for second breakfast, elevensies, lunch, dinner, supper and afternoon tea.)

What it is, kids, is all the magic that anybody gave to the Nameless is all going back to the things that gave it up. And apparently there is some left over for Merry? Or maybe it just goes to whoever is present, and Merry is like the person who gets the door prize after the first number gets called a few thousand times? I don't know.

And then we move from the Acid Trip that Gandalf forgot straight into LKH's Patented Plot Resolution Summery:

The boys bind the Nameless into Maeve Reed's backyard while Merry is unconsious. Uh...okay.

Hey, remember how Merry's big problem was that her apartment was too small and she had no money for a bigger one? Maeve's letting them use her guest house now! PROBLEM SOLVED! And damn time, too. Otherwise members of the audience might begin to sympathize with Merry's real life problems...

Taranis is worse than Andais. Yeah, we got that part. Everybody has magic now, yeah, we got that too. Oh, and since Merry's second "hand of power" has been ass-pulled into existance, she now has to have more magic waiting in the wings to rescue her! Oh, YIPPEE! And hey, how special is Merry's new power?

All I need is a small wound and I can call all the blood from a being’s body. I am Princess of Flesh and Blood. The hand of blood hasn’t been seen as a power since the days of Balor of the Evil Eye. For those of you not up on pre-Celtic history, that’s thousands of years before the birth of Christ.

Yep.  I'm gonna just leave that there.

Hey, remember how Frost freaked the fuck out over having to go back to Andais when all this is over? Queen Crazy was in such a good mood about the whole nameless/hand of blood thing, that she gave Merry all the men. Kind of the way you'd give somebody a chess set as a homewarming gift.

The last paragraph is all dedicated to pointing out the one major plot fail in this book: Merry got Maeve pregnant, but couldn't manage the same for herself. Because that would resolve things. Ah, but she is praying to deity who is always listening and be careful what you pray for because you get it, because Deity is just a magical bag of holding there to grant your pretty shiny wishes all the live long day.

This is the last line in the book:

Goddess grant us good luck and a fertile winter.

WE ARE DONE. NO MORE CARESS OF TWILIGHT.

(...BONUS ROUND! Frost Burned. Yeah, so each of the Mercy Thompson books has a "theme." Like the first book was wolf/Mercy-centric, then we had a vamp book, then we had a fairy book. Second cycle, Vamp book, fairy book, Mercy-centric book (in which the shark was well and truly jumped.) and so this one, predictably enough, was a vamp book.

...for the last twenty percent. the first twenty percent was Adam and the wolf pack getting kidnapped and Mercy doing absolutely nothing to find them. Her thing was "hide Jessie", which we did until Adam and the wolves saved themselves via an info-dumping deus ex machina that also had a handcuff key. The nearest we got to an actual vampire was when Mercy let a werewolf bleed all over the Queen of the Damned's car. She stood around watching the climatic fight--which was NOT foreshadowed at all--and then let the big bad fall on her magic sword. And then Adam ripped the big bad's throat out because Logic. I guess. My love affair with Mercy has not ended, but that love was mostly rooted in watching the pack interact with itself and watching Mercy and Adam try to turn their relationship into something healthy. Removing the pack and Adam for most of the book? This is not helping. Also: if your book is first person perspective and you find yourself having to switch to another viewpoint character AND to third-person to resolve a VERY MAJOR plot point? SOMETHING MIGHT BE BROKEN WITH YOUR PLOT.)

(Suffice to say I am not happy with the book.)

(Also-also: The third book had a rape scene in it. I acknowledge that it was probably problematic, but I found it to be validating re: my own experiances and the fact that Mercy killed the fucker herself was profoundly satisfying. It had a profound effect on many characters and was central to the plot of the third book. It might not have been the most accurate or socially acceptable thing to put in a book, but it's not the most socially acceptable thing to have happen to you, either.

So using similar circumstances as filler for Frost Burned? Circumstances that had no effect whatsoever on the final conflict? THAT WAS NOT A GOOD PLAN. The series could still rescue itself, but it had better damn well do it with the very next book.)

Why Publish America is the scum of the universe

To my writer-readers. Remember my post about vetting? Where I said that "dream" language was a read flag? That you should be very wary of any agent or publisher that spends a lot of time telling you they want to make your dreams come true? Did you wonder what that might look like?

This. This is what it looks like.

I haven't said a lot about Publish America, mostly because the first thing you figure out in writing after "Don't write your manuscript in papyrus and actually send that to anybody" is that Publish America is the worst deal on the market for authors, flat out, across the board. Author Solutions is evil, but Author Solutions is Darth Vader to PA's Emperor Palpatine. Vader works for the Dark Side. PA IS the Dark Side.

You know how I said that Absolute Write has a thread background checking everybody in the publishing industry ever? Publish America gets its own forum. And it isn't pretty.

In fact, if AWWC wasn't actually behind the Atlanta Nights sting op (Uh...here you go. Tell your free time it was nice, but you found somebody else) most of the long-term professional members still participated.

Publish America. DO NOT ENGAGE.

Caress of Twilight chapter 41

I want a moment of silence, folks. A moment to commemorate what might have been.

Merry and company have rushed to rescue Maeve Reed. The police are apparently everywhere because an emergency exists, only they can't figure out what the fuck is going on (HINT: MAGIC) and we get the most beautiful, exciting piece of information to come our way this entire book:

A woman in full police battle armor with SWAT written across it was standing behind a barrier of cars in a pentagram and circle that she’d drawn in chalk on the road. L.A. had been one of the first police departments to attach witches or magicians to all special units.

There is a witch. Attached to SWAT. For serious.

WERE THE FUCK WAS THIS BOOK? WHY ARE WE NOT READING THIS BOOK? I want this book. I want a book about SWAT witches RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Dead serious. Somebody with more police procedural knowledge than me: START WRITING RIGHT NOW AND SELF PUBLISH IF YOU HAVE TO. I WANT THIS BOOK.

Immediately we find out:

-Merry can sense the witch's spell, in that it makes the air hard to breathe
-Doyle hates cars
-Lucy rode with them
-Doyle really hates cars
-Doyle likes to connect with the earth and this looks like he is praying
-DOYLE REALLY HATES CARS.

We have a swat witch standing over to the left doing magic things and we are focusing on an elf that gets carsick.

WHY?

 And thank you GOD, Laurel has finally figured out how to summerize her fucking side-trips:

The other guards, including Sage, poured out of the van. At Doyle’s urging we had gone back to the apartment for some more blades. Lucy had been against it, until he pointed out that until the Nameless’s glamour was broken, bullets wouldn’t hurt it. He assured her that they had things at the apartment that would break its glamour if anything could.

 Lucy had decided it was worth a side trip. She had radioed ahead that without some magical aid, the police might not be able to see the thing, let alone shoot it.

If it were any earlier in the book, this would be an entire chapter. I mean, can you just see it? Doyle insists they go back to the apartment. Lucy says they can't go back to the apartment. Doyle says they must. Lucy says they can't. Merry somehow manages to turn this into a pissing contest involving feminism. Nicca can't find that package from Magical Blade of the Month Club. Galen starts making out with Merry because it helps her focus, and they find the missing swords in the couch cushions while he's preforming an in-depth exploratory mission of Uranis. The Magical Mirror-phone is ringing with invitations to the Grand Galloping Gala, which Merry can't attend because the invite came from Rarity and not Princess Mi'amore Cadenza. Kitto is over in the corner playing with his not-toys in his not-a-dog-bed.

--I'm now absolutely convinced this scene existed verbatum, but LKH's publishers said "Not even with Micah's dick."

And then there is more on the spell. Apparently the witch tried "something simple" and it didn't work, so she went to work on the chalk drawing and the air is full of vaguely defined magic of some sort that makes it hard to breathe. Is she suffocating the nameless or something? Fuck me, Silver Ravenwolf has better descriptions than this. DEFINE THE MAGIC, MERRY. DEFINE THE MAGIC.

The spell rolled out and hit its target. The air wavered like heat rolling off summer asphalt. Except this heat wavered up and up, towering over twenty feet into the air.

That's literally as much description as we get. The best human magic can do is that ripply shit you get at three PM in July.

Why are humans not dead?

And of course, the police start shooting at the thing because police never worry about hitting the unarmed civilians inside the house. And the bullets go right through, and Merry idally wonders where the rounds are going.

Hey, am I the only person who has watched Hot Fuzz? Anybody else remember the massive mountain of paperwork they had to do right before Crazywatch guy came in and set the deep water mine off? The SWAT team has a pet witch on payroll. DO NOT TELL ME THIS POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT HAVE PAPERWORK TO MATCH. They probably have a maurading god form, a miffed demigod form, a magical accident form, a "this person clearly irritated God/Goddess" form. Every person here took one look at shimmery mindfuck here and thought "Let's see, I've got thirteen bullets. That's thirteen 'I shot at Cthuluhu' forms...Lovecraft forbid I actually hit anything with those, because that's the "act of God" form, the 'irritated deity' form, the 'insanity meter down twenty percent form," and so on and so on.

Doyle says they have to kill the nameless. But they can't kill the nameless because it is the nameless and they have to break its power. How do you break its power? By "wounding" it.

I am quite seriously imagining every single character in this scene as Angie McDowell's character from Hudson Hawk. "You must pay the rent" "But I can't pay the rent." The fact that I am movie and book hopping right now tells me my brain wants to be doing anything but this book right now. Le sigh.

Anyway, the only way to strip its magic is to wound it, and the only way to wound it is to get close with the Magical Blade of the month and draw blood.

From something that is a construct of all the powers the Faerie don't want.

HOW DOES THIS THING HAVE CORPOREAL FORM?

It's Korrok, isn't it? The Faerie summoned this dimension's version of Korrok. AND IT DOES FART.

...does this mean we can have David Wong and John instead of Merry and Co? And Molly? Seriously. Molly>Merry any day of the month. It is a dog that can drive a car. John will kill THIS version of Korrok with a magic enchilada after doing battle with a few dozen gorilla riding crabs and then spend the rest of the book explaining how we're all just figments of his cock's imagination.

(...fine, fine. /John Dies at the End references. Seriously, have you at least watched the movie yet?)

Anyway, the guys are literally comparing swords to figure out whose is the most magical and thus who is most capable of hurting the Nameless.


Yeah. If we're going to have pointless phallic imagry can we go back to the John Dies mashup? It was more entertaining.

And then more random Gaelic as we describe Doyle's swords. One of them apparently does to the brain what an opened ark of the covenant does to Nazi faces. The other one...

Okay, I would have breezed right on past this shit, but enough people highlighted it for it to be noted in the Kindle. Humanity thinks this is special: 

The daggers on his wrists were twins, formed together at one making. These legendary blades were thought to hit any target once thrown. Their nicknames at court had been Snick and Snack.

Please tell me this has mythological significance and it isn't just LKH trying to be cute.

And then we take a break from all of this for a moment in absurdity:

I had put a belt around the middle of the sundress and threaded a side holster through it to hold my own gun. It ruined the line of the dress, but if things went really wrong, I’d rather survive looking a little silly than die looking perfect.

Let me get this straight. You went back to your apartment to grab weapons and you didn't bother to get out of a dress first? BLUE JEANS. WHITE SHIRT. Come on, Merry. Yeah, you wouldn't look hot and sexy, but you wouldn't look silly and you wouldn't have to fuck with a skirt while you are being attacked by magical godzilla here. 

Well, at least it isn't Anita's "We have leg slits up to my belly button" dress from that date with Jean Claude.

(...yes. I did totally quote a Lana Del Ray song. Thanks for asking!)

We then get a litany of weaponry, armament and clothing that even informs us that Kitto has a sword.

Which is strapped to his Wile E. Coyote T-shirt.

We took time out from the action to make this very clear. The not-a-twelve-year-old Merry has been fucking is wearing a looney-tunes T-shirt.

HAVE I MENTIONED THAT I HATE THIS BOOK YET?

And then LKH actually stuns me.

See, Doyle runs off because he thinks he can kill the Nameless, and Frost runs off because Bromance, and Merry demands a kiss but if he touches her lips he will be "forever by her side" or some shit like that, and then:

Rhys swept me up into his arms while I was still too surprised to react. He kissed me, thoroughly and completely, and ended up wearing most of my red lipstick on his lips. He sat me back on my feet a little breathless. 

“You can’t steal my courage with a kiss, Merry. You don’t love me enough for that.” He ran after the other two before I could think of anything to say.

It's not perfection, but it's the closest we're going to get to good writing in this book. Seriously, it shows you so much about both their characters and their relationship. It's a little cheesy, but in a different book with better plotting and higher stakes (say, fewer boyfriends?) it'd be Bree and not cheddar, you know?

...yes, I am a romantic idiot. Why do you ask?

AND then Nicca points out that nobody has bothered to get Maeve Reed out of the house. 

YEP. This is treated as if it were an option the entire time. Lucy runs off to find a helicopter to get Maeve out fast, while Merry and Galen go blithely into battle. You know, because body guards will do that.

End of chapter.

State of the CW

Tired is being a waitress in a coastal town during spring break.

Especially when Padre Island is only a very short drive away (...if you factor the OH FUCK IS IT LONG ferry line going to and from the island. Because oh fuck is it long) so all the spring breakers show up when the sun has gone down and you are literally counting the last few minutes of the shift.

And tonight we are open until ten.

Hold me.

Editing on Starbleached 3 is going. Slowly, but it is going. Mostly because I wake up tired and I look at the computer screen and all I think is I want to sleep more. I WILL MEET THE DEADLINE I SWEAR. I do not like breaking promises I make to you guys. And I know this is one of those books you are looking forward to.

Also, I have set aside a special part of my Deviantart account for my books.  As per my contracts with Amazon and Barnes and Noble they are the same price, but you get more things with the purchase.

AND THE BEST NEWS THAT I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL MONTH FOR: STARBLEACHED GOES OFF KDP SELECT ON THE 18th.

Why is that a big deal? It means you epub readers can read it as an epub. And I get to paste it up everywhere and sell it.

Which means on the 19th I am having a major promotion on DA, as it is the easiest platform to advertise on so far. I will report how it goes. Hopefully, it will go well.

Now for the not-so-good news: Sales this month have sucked. I knew it going in because I did not have the material or the energy to do another release hard on the heels of Gray Fox. But I didn't expect it to be this bad. Seven sales at the midpoint for the month.

NOTE: THIS IS NOT A GUILT TRIP DO NOT GO OUT AND BUY SOMETHING YOU DID NOT PLAN TO BUY BECAUSE I AM COMPLAINING ON MY BLOG. This is my blog and my place to complain if I want to. If I know it's turned into a reader-guilt-trip circle jerk thing? I will enjoy it less.

I guess the great Moral of the Story is: dips happen. It is sad when sales dips happen, but one bad month after six-seven really good months? Does not equal a trend. I'm in the process of moving off an Amazon-exclusive marketing platform, which is good because Amazon=all the assholes, but is bad because Amazon has also=all the sales. It also means I am going to have to pull a couple titles off Amazon completely to offer them as freebies elsewhere, because Amazon's contract says so and I follow my contracts.

The adjustment period is just going to suck. :(

Caress of twilight chapter 40

Plot pisses me off in any of Laurel K Hamilton's writing. 

Not because it is bad, mind you. No. It is because it is good. It is very good. I can see how all the points will connect, my dear loyal blog readers. I can see how a good writer would have woven things together had they been given this plot before the eleventh hour. And instead we get a facilitating plot contracted into less than ten chapters because the author can't be bothered to either outline or revise her fucking books.

Chapter 40 opens with everybody being amazed that Taranis is that crazy.

I am willing to cut LKH a lot of slack, but obvious plot thread is obvious. It is perfectly acceptable to have your MC roll with it and move on. Acting like it's a total surprise when your readership already gets it? Yeah, your MC just looks like an idiot.

(Note to writers: if being dense is a character flaw it is perfectly acceptable to do this. It shows the reader that density is a real thing)

What's really interesting is that Martyr of the Month Lucy Tate is apparently more on the up and up re:Fae than Merry is, because she immediately figures that Taranis wants Maeve Reed dead.

Also? This is the first time we find out that if a Fae fades, they are effectively doomed to wander the earth as a hungry life sucking ghost.

We are ignoring this plot to focus on Merry's fertility. Frankly, I think we're getting short shift.

And then we find out that Bucca kept his mouth shut until Merry brought her men around, and that having the men around was the only thing that motivated him to talk. Whatever the plot is, it revolves around Merry.

And then Bucca starts explaining how to talk the ghosts down, and...yeah, it's time to out myself.

It wasn’t a matter of magic words, more of magical intent and just knowing how to think it through.

In case my heavy-handed hints weren't enough, I consider myself to be a Christian Witch. It's nothing major, and the only reason I bring this up? Folks? THAT IS BULLSHIT. I read a lot on the subject FREQUENTLY. It does not work that way. Gods have rules, folks. Intent has a lot to do with it, but following those rules have even more to do with it, and I really doubt that Princess Merry is following any deity's rules other than her own.

(...yes. I am willing to answer questions)

ANYHOO. Bucca also reveals that Taranis is controlling the Nameless. Again: When your infodump is making more sense than your MC? It's time to rewrite the entire fucking plot.

Now. A normal protagonist would go "Deadly magic monster? In MY neighborhood? FUCK THAT SHIT" and go marauding with torches until the danger were ended. In this case we have to justify Merry saving one individual life, so Rhys says that the Nameless will go Godzilla over all of LA if they don't manage to stop it BEFORE it kills Maeve.

What is Merry's solution to Maruding killer magic monster?

“We’re going to go keep Maeve Reed alive. Maybe convince her that Europe would be good this time of year. Maybe just keep her moving ahead of it until we can figure out something else.”

WORST. HEROINE. EVER.

And then Merry has to borrow Lucy Tate's cell phone, and SOMEHOW Lucy Tate has Maeve Reed's personal phone number on hand in a notebook.

I want you to consume that for a minute. A RANDOM COP has a movie star's personal phone number IN HER POSESSION without any prior contact whatsoever. What the fuck, boys and girls?

Oh, but it gets so. much. better.

See, the Nameless attacked right when Merry calls Maeve Reed. 

  “Something’s here, something so psychically big I can’t even begin to sense all of it. It’s trying to get through the wards, and I think it’s going to do it.”

That's Julian talking. The chapter ends with Merry racing out to Maeve Reed's house to go save lives.

Yeah. If this isn't pulled out of someone's ass in the eleventh hour I'm a pumpkin.

Self publishing Thursday--post the third

So. You have edited your book to the best of your ability. Sure, you can go publish it right now. It probably won't go over too well. "The best of your ability" right now? That's not going to be "the best of your ability" once you're done with this next part.

And if you're following the plan? The next part is submitting it to the pros. Agents, ladies and gents. It is time for us to find an agent. Or possibly a publisher, if you're in the mood for that too. But how do you FIND one of these strange creatures? And how do you make sure you're submitting to a good one?

1. Find a list. There are several.

The most famous, of course, is probably Writer's Market. It is a listing of publishers, agents, magazines. It also comes with the bare minimum of advice. Stephen King started out fishing magazine names out of the back of a three year old version back in the seventies.

I'm a little meh about Writer's Market. Anybody can get listed. ANYBODY. And Writer's Market doesn't give you any indications of how good that market actually is beyond how much money they will pay you. You can buy it, but you will wind up using the other lists I'm going to give you anyway, because verifying the legitimacy of a given market is more important IMHO than finding that market in the first place. It's also a static book, and nothing is worse than using outdated information for an agent or publisher. So look forward to buying a new one every year.

Another good list is Publisher's Marketplace, and you can tell it's a good info source because my gut did one of those fun "bad memory drop" things when I opened the site. I used it a LOT in my query days. Yes. It's hard to navigate that site and it REALLY pushes for you to get a paid account. You don't need one. This is what you look for:

 The next page is just as confusing, so just ignore it and go back to the side bar over here:

Click on the applicable link and fill out the things on the search form you actually understand. (I don't know what half of those things mean, and half of them I don't understand why that would apply to my book, so I leave them alone). You'll get a list of results.

You'll also note how a lot of those categories don't apply to people looking for a trade publisher. Yes, folks, we'll be coming back here when it's time to start self publishing our books. 

That said, all that you'll see on those pages are what the agent/publisher/whatever wants you to see. And impressive stats, I am sorry to say, are easy as fuck to fake. This is a better option than Writer's Market because the info is more up to date, and there will be a direct link to the person's website with even more up-to-date info.

The third list is Query Tracker. Again: up to date information, you're still just seeing what the agent/publisher wants you to see, and you'll still have to vet the ever-loving daylights out of the company before you submit. One thing Query Tracker offers that Writer's Market and Publisher's Marketplace don't is query history. How long a publisher or agent takes to actually answer a query, what the ratio of rejections to requests is, whether those requests are for partials (part of the manuscript) or fulls (all of the manuscript) and so on. Useful stuff.

The last two places are, of course, places I've brought up before. Predators and Editors is a database of every publisher, agent, and author service the guy running it has ever heard of, and Dave Kuzminski camps out on Absolute Write more than I do. He's heard of a lot. Most of his listings do not tell you genre, contact info, submission guidelines or even link to the respective agent's pages, but they DO tell you something even more important: If you can actually trust that person with your work. A typical page looks like this:


We have, in order, a LONG accounting of how an offscreen agent got charged with a felony, a breif accounting of how another agent was charged with theft, Agent that is a member of Association of Author's Representatives, which is a good thing, and a dollar sign that indicates this agent has many good, known sales, A random agent, a retired/mia agent, one of the best human beings in the universe and certainly one of the best agents (Seriously: I heart Janet Reid.) Agent with known sales, another random agent, and another agent with known sales and AAR membership.

And last but most importantly, yep kids, you knew this was coming, The Absolute Write Water Cooler's Beware and Background Check's forum. Bookmark it and CAMP there. Any day you start researching and mailing queries? B&BC should be in an open tab. I AM NOT KIDDING. They have a thread on everybody. I found them by googling agents in Writer's Market and finding them in the first or second result EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. They're also useful because agents I hadn't submitted to would float to the forum's surface every once in a while. You can find out everything there except prefered genres and submission guidelines: website links, how trustworthy they are, how long you can expect to wait between query and answer, how polite the agent is.

My query submission research was basically all of the last four sites. Find the agent on either Publisher's Marketplace or Query Tracker, check their website, vet them via P&E and B&BC, and then send away.

Which brings us to the next step:

2. Vet them. Vet them. VET THEM. 

You cannot skip this step. My day of query research, I googled five agencies out of Writer's Market. One of them was Desert Rose. Only two of them turned up good, and that's actually a really, REALLY good result. There were days where everybody in my genre seemed to be either charging fees, inexperianced or a flat out scam artist.

So. First thing you do is find the agency. We're going to use Janet Reid as an example because she is awesome, and she's not my genre so I have no ulterior motive in flattering her. (other than that she's awesome.)

Let's say we find her through publisher's marketplace.

The first thing you look for are language red flags. (For the record, I don't see any in her listing) Look for language that talks about "making dreams come true" or anything that makes your heart pound and your hopes soar, because that usually indicates this person either has no idea what the fuck they're talking about or they're trying to shut your brain off and get you to submit without researching further. That's not a "Fuck no" finding, but that means you need to be VERY careful.

Instead of praising you, Janet just tells you what she's looking for. File that stuff for the next stage and move down to her client listings.

If an agent lists no clients, that's a red flag. You want a good, successful agent with lots of contacts and a good track record. Someone who has all these things will post them everywhere. Stephenie Meyer's agent has Stephenie Meyer's name listed on her webpage, I PROMISE you. Janet has a huge client list. Look for names you recognize because that usually indicates a successful author, and that in turn can indicate that this agent can make YOU a successful author. Janet represents a lot of successful people.

Now go down to her sales list.

Again: An agent shy of listing sales either has no sales to list, or they have sales that they don't want to brag about. An agent with good sales is probably resisting the urge to wallpaper the outside of their office building with the list. However, some agents will make sales to publishers that don't require agents to submit, and will use those sales to build a "fake" list, so you have to put in a little legwork at this point. Google the name of the publisher and check their submission guidelines, their P&E listing and their B&BC thread. Usually if you see "no unsolicited manuscripts" that means you need an agent to make a sale and that means the agent in question is a good one. However, if the press is a big enough deal (IE Baen and Tor) an agent will equal a response in a couple of months rather than two or three years.

Janet has had sales to Harper (Big deal) Soho Press (I'm not familiar with that publisher, but a quick
google says Big Deal, so that gets a pass) and Warner Brothers.

As in the movie studio. As in one of her clients has had a movie deal. That's HUGE.

Now. Check the dates on every sale. A sale two years ago has less weight than a sale last year. A sale last year has less weight than a sale last month. Agents are usually slow to update these listings, so we'll stick with sales within the last two years. Which Janet has (a 2013 publication date usually indicates a 2012 sale)

If an agent's last sale to a big deal publisher was five years ago? PASS.

We can now reasonably assume that Janet Reid can sell your manuscript to a good publisher and make sure you get a good deal in the bargain.

However, we need to be thorough. Does she charge fees? How does she behave towards her authors?  Well, let's go back to her P&E listing. First off, that dollar sign indicates she has sales. That's good. That "recommended" means she passes P&E's vetting criteria. This is also good. Finally, that AAR membership means she can't charge fees for her services beyond her commission for selling your book, because AAR members have a strict set of conduct guidelines they have to follow to qualify for membership. So that's a HUGE point in her favor.

Last but not least: B&BC thread.

Everybody hearts Janet on Absolute Write. And yeah, it's kind of not fair to use Janet as an example because she does amazing things for writers who aren't her clients too. Both her blog and her other blog are must-reads for writers of any sort.

Ah, but we're not done. We know the agent is legit, but is she our agent? Time to check what genres she represents.  Publisher's marketplace says:
General fiction
Mystery
Suspense/thriller
Reference

Biography
Business/investing/finance
History
I read that back in '10, and I was like "OH FUCK, really?" because my genres are sci-fi and fantasy and neither of those are there, and that meant I had to just worship from afar. NEVER submit to an agent who doesn't have your genre on the list. Not having fantasy on the list means the agent doesn't do fantasy, maybe she doesn't even like fantasy, maybe she just doesn't have connections to the fantasy people in the editing departments. Either way, publishing is REALLY specialized. The team doing Mystery is going to be different from the team doing Fantasy, and the more specialized an agent is, the better they know the genres they represent. If you REALLY want a rejection letter right now? Submit. But if you want to minimize the number of rejections you get, hedge your bet and leave agents out of your genre alone. Do not annoy the agent.

But if your genre is there? Goody. Look at what she's looking for specifically. On Publisher's marketplace, she gives you a couple good examples. She really wants a good biography, or something on current events. She doesn't want any books about assassinating a president. If your book is Dead Zone meets Mean Girls? You're SOL. If your book is a biography of the Texas Seven? YAY! You might be what she's looking for.

A publisher changes things up a little bit, but not much. A good publisher will make finding their submission guidelines hard. Not because they don't want you to submit, but because they are far more interested in you buying their books than they are in looking at your book. That's because selling their books is how they make their money. Again, the "dream" language is a massive red flag because it means their model is focused more on writers than it is on actual customers, and that's bad for you. "We help authors reach their dreams!" turns me off faster than Stilton Cheese breath. Another red flag is a micropress that prints everything. Again, publishing is really specialized, and you want somebody focused on YOUR genre. Check bookstores for their books, and then check their Amazon rankings. Low numbers=high sales. DO NOT SUBMIT TO ANYBODY WHOSE BOOKS HAVE A RANKING GREATER THAN 100,000. That means their books are selling less than a copy a day. Those are self publisher numbers, and it means you'll be better off alone than you would with that press. Check covers. Check their P&E and B&BC threads. Read the last page first. There have been several spectacular meltdowns in the last several years (Dorchester-Leisure being a big one) and when it hits the AW boards the back end of the threads explode. You want to know how a press is doing RIGHT NOW, and not ten years ago.
 
3. Build a list of your own. God made Excel spreadsheets for a reason.

 Now that you've vetted and cleared a number of agents and publishers, it's time to put a list together. Mine is very simple: Name of agent, date of query submission, and date of rejection. Why do we do this?

Because 50 rejections is kind of normal. Most published writers have hundreds of rejections. Stephen King had so many rejections the nail he hung them all on broke. And when you have submitted to fifty agents, it gets kind of hard to remember which ones you've sent off to. Then you have the remote chance that the agent is interested. You can keep track of requests for your manuscript. And sometimes agents will ask you to remind them that you submitted something, so if its been six months since query/full submission AND THE AGENT SPECIFICALLY ASKS THAT YOU DO THIS, your list can remind you to do a follow-up. Again, do only if an agent asks you to follow-up after X number of weeks, because you do not want to annoy the agent.

4. Find and Follow the Submission Guidelines. To the letter.

99.99999% of rejections are due to bad submission packets. Let's head back over to Janet Reid's website and take a look at what hers are.

First thing you see? She prefers e-mail queries. This means don't send her paper anything. Some agents prefer snail-mail queries. (I have never submitted to snail-mail agents because REALLY? REALLY? IT IS 2013 AND YOU WILL BE SENDING ME A PIECE OF PAPER WITH "NO" WRITTEN ON IT ANYWAY WHY CAN WE NOT DO THIS ELECTRONICALLY? THE TREES THINK OF THE TREES) and that's what you should send. The wrong kind of query? It goes in the round file.

Next up, she tells you what to send WITH your query letter: the first three to five pages.

This is generous. Some agents asks for just the first three. Some ask for the first ten, and I heart them completely. Some ask for the query letter only and if they really like that, they'll ask for pages.

And before you start screaming "How can they judge the whole book from three pages" The answer is they can't. But they CAN judge the writing from the first three pages. Often, from the first one. Most queries do not get read past that first page. And even though I said rejections are the result of bad submissions, most of the time you can also blame it on that first page. This is why I recommend you do this even if you intend to self-publish the book. You WILL be revising those opening pages until your eyes bleed and your brain dribbles out of your ears, and that goes double for your query letter. (Which I will talk about next week) If the writing passes, they'll start asking for more of the book.

She tells you how to send those pages (pasted into the e-mail, not as an attachment. I have only seen TWO agents ask for attachments on that first e-mail) and what to title your e-mail (Query for TITLE) so that she doesn't immediately pitch the e-mail into the round file as spam.

Then she tells you what she wants (Thriller, mystery, death penalty stuff) and what she doesn't want (Fantasy or sci-fi. Fuck.)

I also know that she doesn't want scary ghost story thrillers because she said on Query Shark that those plots give her the screaming willies. Which means the more you follow agents, the more information you'll find out about what they're looking for.

Publishing: The only industry that ENCOURAGES e-stalking. 

If there is ONE problematic thing in the whole set of guidelines, it is this: "When in doubt, query me. I'd rather see something that's not right for me than miss something fabulous."

This does not mean: "Send me your 20K story about elves or the 150K query re: Vampires in Space because you hope I'll be interested in it anyway." This means "If I have not already specifically said no to this type of book, submit."

Sometimes she does ask for fantasy or sci-fi stuff if she gets something interesting on Query Shark. If it's really good, she doesn't keep it. She sends it over to Suzie Townsend/whoever is the leading fantasy agent on Fineprint Lit these days.

Your book is probably not that "something fabulous" she's looking for. It's better not to annoy the awesome agent.  


5. Assume it's a rejection. ALWAYS assume it's a rejection. It's easier to handle.

 I really hate rejection letters. Not because it's a rejection, but because rejection letters are usually the biggest piece of overwritten tripe you'll ever encounter in your life. You want two things: YES or NO. And if it is a NO you want to get it over with that much faster so that you can move on to the crying and the whiskey and the chocolate.

Instead, most of them start out with a "thanks for submitting" line, a line explaining why you're getting a form letter and/or a line explaining why the e-mail is coming from the agent's assistant's e-mail account (because the assistant is the one that reads the queries. Because you WANT the assistant to b the one reading the queries) and then a "No" that seems to ignore that Strunk and White rule about not using six words where one will do. "We regret to inform you we are not interested"=NO.

You will see many badly written nos. 

Remind yourself what your ultimate goal is: Make the best book you possibly can. Remember that you never intended to get trade publication even though you'd really like it. Remind yourself that this is practice for when some idiot teenager gives you a badly spelled one star review because Plot Element A didn't meet their expectations.

Get incredibly drunk. Go repeat steps 1-5.