Trick or Treat

All those affected by Hurricane Sandy, I hope you're doing okay out there! I am just fine over here in the DC area - I've had my fair share of experiences with intense storm systems, and my power even hung in there this time. And I don't have to go into work today, so I have some time to catch up on blogging.

Anyway. What even was this month, you guys? I had planned to celebrate Halloween the way I always do - by babbling about it all October-long - but life supremely got in the way. And by life, I mean a time-consuming new job, the sinus infection from hell (and subsequently, an antibiotic that made my symptoms worse and then made my tongue swell up), submission drama, more submission drama, and trying to find time to write all through this.

So to make up for the rec-fest that never was, we will condense it. Because I am holding Halloween right here on this blog, and inviting y'all to come Trick or Treat!

So here's how it goes. Ring my doorbell, and request a medium (movies, tv shows, books, webcomics, campfire stories, etc) and a scariness-level (anywhere from 'mildly creepy' to 'balls-out terrifying,' or just 'non-scary Halloween-themed' if lying awake at night isn't your thing.) You can throw in an optional detail if you so desire, such as your favorite thing that goes bump in the night. And taking your preferences into account, I will find some great Halloween entertainment for you. Because everyone knows the best part of Halloween is the stories we tell!

Ready, set, go!

The WIP Meme

... well, it was actually called "The Next Big Thing" meme. And I certainly hope so, but let's keep it a little less ambitious, shall we? ;-)

What is the working title of your book?Tick Tock. Some days I like it, and some days I'm sure I could do better, but today I think I like it.

Where did the idea come from for the book?
The setting, a town built around the ruins of a once-prosperous factory, had been on my mind for several weeks, as well as the desire to write a sort of Sherlock-and-Watson relationship between two teenage girls. It wasn't until I was marathoning Downton Abbey one weekend, that the class conflict aspect came into play, but once I decided to set the story in America, I had a little trouble figuring out how to make that aspect work. After a talk with my friend (in which she shot down most of my fledgling ideas), I remembered the old watch factory in the town I went to college in, and the rest was (alternate) history!

What genre does your book fall under?
YA historical/gothic horror - my first straight-up horror manuscript. Everything else has been fantasy, mystery, or paranormal.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I don't tend to cast actors for my books, because I have fantastic artist friends who illustrate my mental pictures for me. But if you'd like to see my friend's AMAZING art of my two MCs, look no further.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Ooooh, I so do not have a good one-sentence pitch yet, but off the top of my head: "After housekeeper Nora saves heiress Claire from an attack by a vicious, unseen animal, she's offered a job in the wealthy Moreau household - as Claire's research assistant."

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Err, hopefully represented. Its big sister manuscript, The Hungry Ground, has been in an exclusive revision situation for a little over a year now - but no one has seen the revised version other than Secret Agent Man and now some of his colleagues, and I only queried twenty-or-so agents to begin with, so HG still has quite a bit of querying life left in it if it gets rejected.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? May we see an intro?
I'm still drafting! This is taking quite a while, because there was a big chunk of HG revisions in the middle of the early Tick Tock chapters. I wrote the first four earlier this year (in April, I think?) and wasn't too sure about it, but strangely enough, when I sent off my HG revisions and came back to it, it all clicked for me. I'm at about 45k of a projected 80k.

And the first line is: The scar was hard to see if you weren't looking for it.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
The Monstrumologist series - with less gore and more female characters, to be sure, but that's my most direct YA comparison. (Although Claire and Nora are the same age, as opposed to mentor and student.)

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
As I said above, Sherlock Holmes and Downton Abbey, and probably a bit of Tim Burton's version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for dreary Northeastern atmospherics.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
It's got a creepy setting, a core mystery, some romance, a truckload of ambiguity, and two teenage girls bonding and hunting monsters. You know you want in!


And I tag anyone who wants to play. I hope to hear about your WIPs!

It's the mooost wonderful tiiiiime of the yeaaaaar

... no, not that one. It's October! Time to celebrate creepiness wherever I find it! HUZZAH.

Alas, though I'd wanted to do a proper Horror Blogging Month like I did last year, between the new job and my WIP, I have no life. But I am hoping to supply y'all with as many goodies throughout the month as possible: creepy writing music, some scenery inspirations for horror stories, whatever good recommendations I can scare up, and maybe even some flash fiction. Who knows!

But even more fun, I am going to have myself a little horror/mystery/thriller/paranormal reading marathon! Here's my fabulous list so far:

THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS by Claire Legrand (accidentally read it last month... womp womp.)

TEN by Gretchen McNeil (read it on a flight this weekend, actually)

THE DIVINERS by Libba Bray

LONG LANKIN by Lindsey Barraclough

GIRL OF NIGHTMARES by Kendare Blake (having devoured the first book of the duology, ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD, last year)

And I'll probably stop there, lest I do nothing but read for the entire month.

I hope the rest of you are enjoying this time of the year as much as I am!

(And for those of you wondering about the revision status... it's complicated! It looks like I'll have to wait a bit longer for my happy ending, but I am moving forward - though not quite in a straight line. Cross your fingers for me?)

New review up at Afterglow!

October is coming up, and as a horror lover, I am SO READY. But if you'd like to get a jump-start on your Halloween reading, check out my new review at Afterglow on deliciously creepy MG horror debut THE CAVENDISH HOME FOR BOYS AND GIRLS by Claire Legrand. And enjoy!

Do you have any favorite Halloween reads? At this rate I'm going to burn through most of mine before October even starts...

WriteOnCon 2012

Hey guys! It's August, and you know what that means. It's WriteOnCon time!

The funny thing about WOC is that I've never actually posted any of my projects there - two years ago I'd just shelved my manuscript when it rolled around, last year I'd just signed on to revisions with Secret Agent Man, and this year I am similarly in Revisions Land (albeit on round two.) But it is such a cool opportunity - I mean, a free writers' conference? That is just amazing - and I love to get in there and see what everyone's got in the pipeline.

In fact, I'd love to see what y'all are working on now! So if you feel so inclined, leave a comment with a link to your query, your first 250, or your first five pages, and I will definitely go take a look. <3

And my profile is here, so friend at will!

Je ne sais quoi

Good morning, everyone! Are y'all as stressed out as I am right now? :) I have quite a few balls in the air, so to speak, so it's been a bit hard to relax lately.

Though my R&R has kept me out of the querying trenches for the past year (!) or so, I've been thinking about that rejection I'm sure we've all received once: "I just didn't fall in love the way I'd hoped." It's a frustrating one, for sure, because maybe there's nothing wrong with the manuscript. Maybe it just didn't cross over from like to love.

It got me thinking about my own reactions to fiction. As I said on Twitter a while ago, I basically have four possible responses to a movie, TV show, or book:

1. Ugh - This is not only bad, it's offensive or problematic in some way, and thinking about it annoys me.

2. Ehhh - Most bad or mediocre fiction falls into this category, and I won't waste energy hating it.

3. I like this! - Fiction in this category ranges from good to excellent. If it's a movie or TV show, it's something I enjoy having on in the background while I do line-edits or work out, and if it's a book, I'll usually spend a nice weekend afternoon reading it. Sometimes I forget it as soon as I'm done, and other times I will idly ponder plot points and relationships on my commute.

4. LYING ON THE FLOOR, INCAPACITATED BY EMOTIONS - I love it so much I cannot actually deal.

Gif is from this album.

Being in love with a piece of fiction is a wonderful thing. I giggle incessantly at the funny moments, I bawl my eyes out at the emotional moments, and I make giant heart eyes at all the characters. Sometimes I'm able to write long, loving reviews about why it's so good, but as a rule, the more I love something, the less coherent I will be about it. My insightful commentary generally adds up to "OMG, [CHARACTER NAME]."

The difference between 3 and 4 is so, so small, but most things I like don't make it to that 'love' stage. And that has nothing to do with quality. Sometimes I will read or watch something, and intellectually I will recognize how well-crafted it is, but it's a solid 3. Then I will read or watch something silly and fluffy and absolutely fall in love with it. It might be a trope that falls into one of my narrative kinks, or a character I completely and utterly fall for, but most of the time, it isn't something I can articulate. The spark was just there for me - and yet, for someone else, that same work of fiction might be a 3. 

Or even a 2.Which I respect. Even if it makes me sad. ;)

So just because your manuscript was a 3 with one agent, don't give up! There might be someone else out there who thinks you wrote a very, very emphatic 4.

What separates like from love for you? Any recent examples?

A lesson on dramatic scenes from the JSA

Good morning, blogosphere! Today, we are flashing back to collegiate Becky and my time as a budding bilingual in the JSA. The JSA, or Japanese Student Association, had a vague enough name that both students from Japan and students of the Japanese language were welcome therein. During our heyday, we had all kinds of great activities: the Spring Festival, Iron Chef night, and, of course, the dances.

In this video, we are performing a yosakoi dance, a subset of dances performed at Japanese street festivals and characterized by lots of dynamic arm movements and yelling. This is also not a perfect run, because SOMEBODY ignored our instructions to wait for us to get into the opening pose before starting the music - okay, sorry, I will never get over that.

(And yes, I am right there toward the front, powering through the sore throat from hell and coming in a liiiiittle too early on some of those wave movements.)

Anyway! The point is, to our fearless leader - the gentleman front and center - the worst thing you could do was halfass the moves. The temptation was certainly there, if only because some of them were a little silly, and if you were self-conscious, the temptation to make the moves as little as possible was strong. The problem with that was, if you make the moves tiny and halfhearted, they will look ridiculous. We had to come in there bellowing and punching and swinging for the fences, because unless we did, it just wouldn't look that impressive to the audience.

While I was idly plotting the denouement of my WIP last night, Fearless Leader's advice popped into my head again. I have always had some trouble with the big dramatic scenes, because that self-consciousness is still there. I worry about making it too big, too melodramatic, and having the scene come off silly because of it. My initial instinct is to shrink back, to make the details vague, to use as little exclamation points as humanly possible.

But when I started revisions on THE HUNGRY GROUND and read through Secret Agent Man's notes, I realized how problematic that was. Even if you like your dramatic scenes on the subtler side - and I do - there's a difference between halfassing the scene and very deliberately dialing back the volume, while still keeping that powerhouse of emotion in play. And sometimes, it's okay if that scene is loud. Sometimes you have to come in swinging for the fences just to match the high intensity of the conflict.

It's still not something that comes naturally to me, for sure. But it's definitely better for me, on my first draft, to try as hard as I can to pour everything on the page. Then after that, I always have my CPs and my betas to help me refine it!

Do high emotion scenes come naturally to you? What's your approach to writing them?