Surprise cover reveal!

Hawks & Rams

Heathric never wanted to be a thief, but his cousin’s scheme was the only option left. Crossing into the neighboring kingdom, stealing sheep, and getting away with it once — that was luck. The second time, trouble follows them home; the local Ranger squad won’t let thieves terrorize their people, and the Rangers cross the border in pursuit. 

Heathric still aches from losing his only boyfriend. One of the Rangers has all but given up on finding a lover who truly wants him. Opposite sides of cross-border banditry is a rough way to meet that perfect match.

2014's been an odd year 
The above is the query letter I sent along with the Hawks & Rams manuscript. Apparently it was good enough to get the editor at Dreamspinner to keep reading.

Hawks & Rams will be my first release with a publisher -- it's due out early in 2015. And the cover art is great! H&R is a fantasy m/m romance with plenty of action and tension. There's some steaminess too, but it's not the focus.

Going through the publishing process with a small press, after having done it myself so many times, has been interesting. I'll try to blog about it after I get home from my trip.

What trip? The trip of a lifetime: two weeks in Bhutan and Nepal as companion to my parents. I've been looking forward to this for months, of course, and now it's functioning as a dividing line in my year. Things will need to be different after I get back.

It's been a tumultuous summer for me. It's also been a more difficult writing year than I expected -- as you can see in my writing progress sidebar, my productivity is in the toilet. My writing discipline has slipped and I need to get my focus back.

For now, the good side of the story: Disciple, Part V is out. Part VI is with the editor already. You can still get Part I for free most everywhere or pick up the Disciple Half-Omnibus if you want the first half of the series in a nice chunk. I have several writing projects to work on and ideas to develop.

How has your 2014 been going?

Incompetent Writers Support Group

The Insecure Writers Support Group is a wonderful thing. However, they post on the first Wednesday of the month and this is, um, the third Tuesday. Anyhow, this is when I've got something to say.

I'm not usually all that insecure about my writing, which is why I don't participate in IWSG. And actually, I'm not going to talk about feeling insecure -- I'm going to talk about feeling plain old incompetent. (I am secure in my incompetence.)

Writing queries, synopses, and even back cover blurbs can do that to you. I post mine over at Absolute Write for feedback, and the blinding glare of absolutely impartial criticism can make anyone throw up their hands and say No, I don't know why anyone would want to read this pile of crap, okay?

When you fall off the horse, it's okay to lie in the mud and bitch a bit. But you do have to haul yourself up and get back on the horse.

I don't know why I got the idea I should write a back cover blurb that covers both Disciple, Part I and Part II. Well, no, I know why I got the idea -- I don't know why I thought it would be any easier than writing a blurb for just one of them. Part II is just a bitch to explain without resorting to "Because s/he wants to do the right thing!" or "Because they're not supposed to!"

Which never sounds compelling. It just doesn't. If I were better at this, if I were more artistic, if I wasn't so damn incompetent... I've written how many of these things, now? Why isn't it getting any easier?

Get up out of the mud. Get back on the horse. It's a story, not the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

Besides, there are four more parts of Disciple to write back cover blurbs for. (shudders)

See what all the fuss is about! (manic laughter) -->

OK, seriously, time to get out of the mud now. Where'd the horse go?

Writing hell: the query

Cram, cram, cram. It will fit.

A query letter is even shorter than a synopsis -- 250 words for the whole thing, preferably shorter. First, a recap of the four questions I ask myself before writing a synopsis:

1. Whose story is this? What is the story?
2. What is your inciting incident?
3. What is your climax?
4. What are the major events that got us from the inciting incident to the climax?

You will need #1, #2 and #4 for writing your query. Maybe #3, maybe not. The goal of a query letter is to intrigue the reader enough to want to see more. To do that, you need to write something that communicates the following:

This is an INTERESTING CHARACTER (see #1) with a SERIOUS PROBLEM (#1 and #2) that he or she is DOING SOMETHING ABOUT despite the danger (#4)

Apply Occam's Razor liberally. Ignore the blood for now. Don't worry about voice, even, just get this on the page. Various sources have pointed out that the above information will probably cover about the first third of your novel -- which is true because in the first third we meet your characters, get through the inciting incident, and make some progress toward the goal despite dangers and set-backs.

Then give the BOOK'S NAME, WORD COUNT, GENRE, and list any publishing credits you may have, awards you WON (nobody cares how close you got if you didn't win), and/or prestigious writing programs you've graduated from. 

Then thank the reader for their time and sign your name. 

Bam, done. Now put it away for an absolute minimum of 24 hours and get something done on your current project -- because you've got something new in the works, yes? 

When you come back to your query, re-write it to add voice if you can. You'll probably notice other problems. And once you've made it as clear as you can, you're going to need to show it to your fellow Writing Hell sufferers. Preferably ones who know nothing about your story. They will explain how you have failed to do any of the things listed above even though you really tried to.

That's okay. Revise and repeat. Going through six or eight drafts is not unusual and does not mean you suck.

You will question the clarity of your story at some point, though, and that is not a bad thing. Maybe a little trimming in some places, expansion in others, would make it easier to answer question #1 above. Maybe some scenes need more focus so it's clear how they fit into question #4. Did the inciting incident (for #2) need to be more dramatic? More traumatic?

These are all vague questions, I know, and only you and your gut can answer them. Writing a query during the revision process helps me think about them, I've found.