New Years Resolutions

New Years resolutions have always struck me as unsustainable, behavior-changing promises. They might see the light of day, or perhaps a week, but certainly no longer than that. Few of us can escape from ourselves.

Yet suppose we resolve to do things that aren't behavior-changing? Suppose we identify certain positive activites in our lives and simply resolve to engage in these activities more often -- much more often -- in fact, so often that few people in the entire country might match the combination of feats we plan?

I could do that. Yeah.

So here's my list. Three simple things. If I can accomplish these three things in combination, I'll be unique:

WRITING - Write a novel
I've just begun the first draft of my new novel, Invulnerable. I resolve to complete this novel in 2010.

READING - Read a ton
I received a Kindle as a Christmas gift and found I can now read in bed without getting sleepy. I resolve to read one book per week for a total of fifty-two books in 2010.

Exercise - Wear out my bicycle
Here's the really hard one. I live in Wisconsin where we're lucky to have 200 good, bicycle-riding days in a year. I resolve to ride five miles on each of those days for a total of 1,000 miles in 2010.

What's your list?

Moving on

I put the finishing touches on The Vagrant and sent it off it to the Golden Heart contest, followed up with queries to a half dozen agents and publishers, watched some movies, daydreamed, moped, critiqued a chapter for my partner, moped some more, got bored and started toying with ideas for my next novel.

There's the ghost story I think about whenever wondering what to write. And the found a briefcase full of money story. Sadly, Cormac McCarthy raised the bar for that one.

Or a zombie story . . . yeah, like the world needs another one of those.

Then it hit me. A sad, gnawing, abandoned-my-kitten guilt. I spent 10,000 words last spring beginning a story about a brother and sister, a leprechaun, a mysterious girl from another dimension and an angel. They've been frozen in the ether, waiting for me to bring them back to life.

The name of the story is Invulnerable, and I'll be working on it for a good long while.

The Story Queen's last hurrah

As noted in my previous post, I recoined my WIP The Vagrant. However, prior to the start of the rewrite, I entered the first few chapters and synopsis in the Indiana Romance Writers' Golden Opportunity contest.

I'm delighted to say the entry has been selected as a finalist in the paranormal category!

What happened to The Story Queen?

Michael Danahey's story about the magical girl who changed his life needed a second voice - Rebecca's. I'm rewriting the book as a third person narrative from both points of view. The new story has been recoined The Vagrant.

Why the change? My original novel just didn't fly with literary agents and contest judges. I want to get the darn thing published. Trying to sell a first person point of view novel is a difficult task for a first-time novelist.

More importantly, several wonderful scenes from Rebecca's POV exploded into my head. She kicked the door down to let herself in.

You might think rewriting an entire novel to change the narrative style is tough enough, but that's the least of my worries. Michael's motivation had to be strengthened, particularly early in the story. Occasional passive sentence structure weakened my voice throughout the book. (Find all uses of that in your own work - a great way to flag passive sentences. Then go to work on other losers such as was, were, so, because, there). Finally, I have a frustrating tendency to tell rather than show Michael's emotions and reactions to things. Somehow, I don't have this problem with Rebecca. Go figure.

I started the rewrite two months ago. Despite the fact I've spent almost all my leisure time on the thing, I'm only a third of the way through the book. But that's okay. This has been the most absorbing, enjoyable project I ever worked on. I'm an alchemist, turning tin into gold! All other WIPs are on the back burner until I finish this one.

Special thanks to eharlequin. I used their bulletin board to find a critique partner. After two unsuccessful attempts, I had the great luck of finding a writer whose skill level matches mine. She's a wizard at identifying duplicate words and the queen of showing not telling. When this novel gets published, she'll be the first one I mention in the dedication.

Joe

The Story Queen is a Finalist!

The Heartland Romance Authors RWA chapter has announced The Story Queen as a finalist in the 2009 Show Me the Spark contest.

I was blown away by the scores and judges' comments. I have three fans out there!

So, now what? Well, for one thing, I need to edit the 17th century Salem passages and sharpen the dialect, using my brother's helpful critique as a guide. And the modern-day dialogue has a bit too much teenspeak in certain passages. I'll fix that, too. After that, I'll wait for the final results and hope one of the final judges asks to see the manuscript. I still have some queries to agents floating around out there, too.

Mostly, though, it's time to move on. I've started a new WIP, tentatively named Invulnerable. It'll be another young adult paranormal romance, this time with a comic book theme. I've completed the first chapter (fodder for a few contests next year!) but only have a vague idea where the story will go. That's the fun part. Getting into that zone and letting the story tell itself.

Joe

2009 Fab Five contest

This was my first time coordinating (Paranormal) and judging (Historical Romance) in the WisRWA FabFive contest. In the words of Groucho Marx, I’d never join a club that would have me as a member, but Karen took a chance on me. Being a newbie, I worked extra hard to get it right.

Coordinating fit like an old glove. I love converting chaos to order. That’s why I’m the one at home who does the laundry at home. I draw the line at dishes, though.

Twenty-four contestants entered my category, the bulk of them arriving in a flurry during the last couple days. I edited format, organized the entries and got them off to fourteen different judges. Each entry was judged by three different people, so my twenty-four entries exploded to seventy-two separate documents! Naturally, a bunch of the judges waited until the last possible moment to do their judging, so a wave of critiqued and scored entries came back right at the deadline or a little beyond. I was happy to see that even the stragglers did a great job of critiquing. Only one of my fourteen judges was stingy when it came to writing comments all over the entries.

As a coordinator, I had the opportunity to read twenty-four pieces of unpublished work. I didn’t really need to do that as part of my assignment, but how could I resist? I also read all of the critiques. Let me tell you, seeing the entries through so many discerning eyes was a major educational experience. It will undoubtedly help me improve my own writing going forward.

Judging was a great experience. The poorest entries were the hardest to critique, of course, and I spent extra time on them. Hopefully my gentle explanation of concepts such as GMC and POV will encourage the struggling new writers in my group of entrants to read a few books on writing and become better novelists. I tried to help even the best writers by pointing out where sentence structure could be made more interesting or where the dialogue might flow better with fewer tags. There was a time many years ago when I thought about becoming a teacher. Judging brought out that side of me.

Finally, I made new friends among the judges and some of the entrants as a result of my FabFive participation, so I got something of lasting value from the experience.

Can’t wait till next year’s contest!

pi

I had forgotten how good this movie is. I love picking up a book or DVD that has been set aside so long the story is fresh and interesting again.

Post-story funk

I need to be patient about my new novel . The first chapter is entered in three contests. Since most editors and agents ask to see the beginning of a book, I don't want to start querying until I receive judge feedback. It'll be important for me to put my best foot forward when submitting, and I want to correct any shortcomings the judges identify.

Then there's the matter of my test readers. Two in particular are important. My daughter plans to make some suggestions regarding the teen dialogue in the book. She thinks I may have sprinkled a bit too much urban slang into it. And my brother, a former English professor, is looking at my "Shakespeare-Lite" dialogue in the passages when my hero travels back to 1692 Salem. Two other readers (one a teenager!) liked the book.

So, I'm going to take my time with this project. When contest and reader input comes in, I'll go from there. A quick rewrite might be necessary to correct grammar and dialogue. I might decide to enter a few more contests. Meanwhile, I have a new project idea, tentatively titled Invulnerable. First two scenes are drafted, and I have a general theme in mind. I'm not excited about the story yet, but that will come soon.

On Writing

I finished my first novel in July 2008. The Martyr Club is a 90,000 word dark satire about religion, sex and violence. The book needs a rewrite before it goes anywhere, and I don't know whether I'm up to it. I'm not a dark person.

I didn't have any credentials for writing a novel, really. Yes I'm college-educated and did take a fiction writing class many years ago, but my entire career has been that of a businessman persuing the American dream, and I've had no training to do anything else. When creating The Martyr Club, I knew nothing about hooks, point of view, sentence structure, GMC or the myriad of other tools a fiction writer needs to capture a reader's interest.

So after finishing that book, I crammed. Stephen King's On Writing served as my first instruction manual, followed by Roy Peter Clark's Writing Tools, Renni Browne's and Dave King's Self-editing for Fiction Writers, Noah Lukeman's The Plot Thickens, and Debra Dixon's Goal, Motivation and Conflict.

I also joined Romance Writers of America so that I could hang around writers and pick up ideas. I think of myself as a writer now. That isn't to say I neglect the business career that has paid the bills for so many years. But a businessman isn't how I want to define myself.

Last month, I completed my second novel, The Story Queen. I love the characters who came to life in this story and hope readers will, too.

Why do I write? At first I wanted to be famous. And rich. I wanted to be in US Magazine eating a hamburger with a caption beneath saying "Celebrities -- they're just like us. "

But now I write, because I find fulfillment that way. I'm proud of my stories and love turning a good phrase. I hate most of the books out there that follow the formula but lack the snappy dialogue and vivid descriptions that readers want. My books won't be like that. No matter the plot or genre, my books will contain passages that a reader might remember.

About The Story Queen

The first good story I ever wrote was done during an airplane trip to a forgotten destination. It's a ballad about a Medieval bum shanghaied to fight a dragon. The vagrant manages to escape and find the love of his life, but just as he kisses her, everthing scatters in the fading remnants of a dream. The story ends on an uncertain note when a dragon flies above the waking man, suggesting that his adventure may have been real. I called that poem The Vagrant.

Sometime later, I wrote The Story Queen to develop a side character. And after that, I wrote the Dream Shadow, to present the first two stories from a different angle and further explore the fine line between dreams and reality.

I was on a poetry writing binge at the time, in the late nineties, and not much of it was very good. However, I held out hope for these three poems, wanting to weave them into a picture book for children, perhaps adding others as well.

I never did.

Many years later, in late 2008 to be precise, I conceived the shadowy idea for a story about a teenage boy who is enchanted by a mysterious Irish girl. In the opening chapter of that novel, Rebecca pulls a book from a shelf and tells Michael that she'd like to read one of her poems to him.

I didn't know what Rebecca was going to read until I peeked over her shoulder and saw The Vagrant. From that inspiration came a novel called The Story Queen. I just completed the third draft of this book and feel that it's something special, whether it gets published or not. At the moment, it's in the hands of some test readers. I've also entered the opening in three different RWA chapter contests. Presuming the judges score favorably and don't suggest major revisions, I'll start querying agents and publishers.

Here are the first three stanzas that Rebecca read to Michael.

Sunlight bathes his face from blue skies overhead.
He blinks,
and sleep fades from his eyes.
Rising now from mounds of leaves which formed his bed,
he stands as morning dew drops dry.

Kneeling by a brook, he washes shaves and drinks.
Light beard,
blue eyes stare back at him.
Combing long blond hair, "adventure" he now thinks.
"A day
of magic is my whim."

As he walks through town a voice from shadows cries,
"Go in,
your fortune she will tell."
"No." The vagrant laughs. "The future care not I!"
"Go in!"
The voice a magic spell.