Tag: literary agents

A Spider’s Web Is Tangled Up With Me

I need a job. That’s the basics of my life at the moment. 
I need to get a job so I can afford my own car and the doubtless high insurance that will come with it. And then, when I get a job, I can see about sending my manuscript off to an agent. It costs so much to send and I’m so broke that I can’t afford it. Not to mention that my family are broke at the moment too, not that my brother cares nor helps. I seem to be the only one who has all the family problems reported to her and reports none of her own because she doesn’t want to stress anybody else out.
And I’m sick of having to listen to my brother playing his crap music so loudly that even with his door closed and my door closed, plus with the television on in here, I can still hear it… and my room is on the opposite side of the house to his. I’m sick of the way he talks to me and everyone else in this house like we’re something he wiped off the soul of his shoe. I’m sick of the way he stresses everybody out in our family. He gets tonnes of stuff and in return all he gives is grief without even a thank you. 
Sadly, I’m in one of those moods where the only thing that will do is screaming or crying and I can’t do either right now. I wish he would turn his music off, grow up and become somebody halfway decent. There’s no reason for the way he behaves except that he is spoilt and selfish. I want to get down on the floor and cry in a little heap. There are things going on in my head that I can’t discuss here for a change (you’re probably glad – I mean, one less depressing thing for me to whine about, right?) and they’re stressing me out too. I don’t know what I’m going to do about them, but I aim to sort them over this Easter holiday. I’ve done the whole teenage figuring out who I really am thing. I finally know who I am and what I want and what I’m willing to do to get there. I only wish that the people who are supposed to support me had supported me in working that out and hadn’t just hurried me along into decisions I wasn’t ready to make. Luck hasn’t been exactly kind lately, either. There just seems to be too much going on in my head. And there’s the fact that I still wake up thinking of my ex, which I should be over by now, surely.
I think I’m going to try using my melancholy mood to write the final scenes of Book Three, Secrets, of my JLM Series. It needs to be completed. And this kind of mood is the kind that will allow me to concentrate on a different world for hours on end and stay comfortably entrenched there. Who knows? It could even propel me to complete the twenty-third chapter and finish off the epilogue.
In other news, I’m going to put up a poll in regards to what you think of the flash fiction I’ve been writing on here. This is so that if you have an opinion on what I’ve been writing but you don’t necessarily want to leave a comment, then you will have a place to share your thoughts. I’d much prefer you left a comment (especially if you have a random sentence that you think could provoke some really good flash fiction), but I guess less is more. It’s nice to see some feedback on my flash fiction from new people, as well. 
I just want everyone to know that, whilst I may not reply to all comments, I do really appreciate them and thank you for taking the time to read what I’ve written as well as to leave a little something from yourself.
Also, if you want to ask me any questions please do refer to my formspring even though my friend Tim has been trying to make me guess who’s questioning me whilst he pretends he’s an anonymous person. It’s amusing to me, but I appreciate that you might not care to read our weird discussions on furbies, pokemon and other such geeky stuff.

(Lyrics in the title are from Trouble by Coldplay)

Crisis of Faith

I was thinking, the other day, about how you can get to a place where you think you’re doing really well and you’re happy with yourself, but then something hits you and you get brought down again. That’s what’s happened today. I won’t say quite what, because I’ll deal with it. It will get dealt with before I let it take me down again (reminds me of a song called Bring Me Down by Sia. If only my life had a background soundtrack like a movie does). It’s days like this when I wish I had people around me that would give me a hug and just tell me that it will be alright and that I can do it.

Anyway, enough of the self-deprecation. I meant to write when I got in, but I haven’t gotten anything done. After my drop in self confidence, I decided to have a nap to get rid of my tiredness. The good news is that I’m not tired any more. The bad news is that I didn’t get any writing done. I didn’t get any editing done either, which, I suppose, would come under the category of writing except that I mean them in regards to two different areas so please bear with me. I need to continue editing Dark Side of the Moon and then I need to finish off writing the two last chapters of Secrets/Spilling Secrets. The latter has started off really well and I’m really pleased with it. I just need to finish it off, but that will get done soon enough. Part of me wants to really concentrate on getting Dark Side of the Moon edited and done so that I can send it off, but, at the same time, the part of me that spiralled down into feeling as if I am totally useless is saying something about how there’s probably no point in sending it to a literary agent anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, I will, but sometimes everything just feels bitterly futile. Sometimes the fact that we’ve made our world so bleak and so hard for people to follow their dreams really gets me down. It’s the same about people’s concern with money. If I had my way, I’d be back in the days when we all lived in small groups in the wild and the highest esteemed people in our societies were the leader of the group and the storytellers. At least then I would seem to have some purpose. I’d really like to know what my purpose is, because part of me thinks that the whole purpose of life is to enjoy it. The rest of me knows that as a civilisation, we have mostly destroyed our chances of enjoying life. The world and all the people in it have far too many worries.

I also want to include this which I wrote in response to my friend’s facebook status about an essay she has to write:

In relation to your anaesthetics thing, your essay should be: “Anaesthetics are weird. Checkoslovakian dentists think they’re actually lost Russian princesses that they’re injecting into your mouth. Other people think they are stupid devices that make you dribble and generally look like you’ve had a stroke*. Anaesthetics are also not something that should be used to cause hilarity… no matter how much I would like to steal some from a dentist, inject my dad in the arm before he wakes and watch him panic thinking he has had a stroke/migraine**. Anaesthetics should not be used as weapons of revenge for sufferers of severe migraines. Furthermore, no matter how much you hate needles and dentists, anaesthetic is not to be used on dentists who are trying to inject you to remove a tooth etc. Kicking the dentist in the face still does not mean you can use his/her own anaesthetic on them.

The stance on doctors using anaesthetics are different. If the doctor was Joseph Byrne from Holby City then he could get his OCD hands on me any time, whether it be an anaesthetic he was inserting or-

But I digress. 

Anaesthetics are just generally bad… Uh… Thank you. 

*Strokes are not Russian princesses either.

**It would serve him right for every time he has made out that my paralysing migraines are not a big deal.

P-S

If you want to mark Susie highly on this essay then a bag of money will be waiting at an undisclosed location. Give her the highest mark and it is yours. Just attach your bank details to her grade. Ciao!”

 I just want to point out that that is no slur on Checkoslovakian dentists… but my dentist is Checkoslovakian and he constantly confuses ‘anaesthesia’ with ‘Anastasia’. As far as I’ve heard, a lot of Checkoslovakian dentists seem to have been taught that Anastasia is the correct term for the stuff they inject you with.

Anyway, I shall try to get to my writing/editing and find my happy place. I hope whoever is reading this has a more uplifting day (indeed, week) than I have had so far.

‘Secrets’ Is Winning So Far

The title says it all in regards to the poll currently up. Hopefully there will be a few more votes. Currently there’s only eight. Two of the selections are closing in on the favourite. I’ve had a couple of questions about the naming of the books on my formspring account so if you want to read the answers to those or ask some of your own then please feel free.

As I’m writing this, I’m trying to edit Chapter 9 of Dark Side of the Moon in the Jocasta Lizzbeth Moonshadow series (the JLM Series tag refers to this). As soon as I’ve finished editing it, I plan to send it to literary agents. It’s an urban fiction piece of work in the older YA literature section; so I’ll start doing my research on the appropriate literary agents when I’m nearing the end of my edits. You’ll probably know when that is because I’ll start getting excited on here. In case you were wondering about it, this is the blurb I mocked up:
[Dark Side of the Moon is the first in the series of books following Jocasta Lizzbeth Moonshadow]

Jocasta always wanted to be a normal witch like her sisters, but she was hunted down with her father and younger brother by the Necromancer when she was just a child. Jo managed to survive and was hidden away, but why did the Necromancer want them dead…?

Now she’s back home and about to start at Lark Hall High. Suddenly her eyes begin changing colour. How can she start school like this? What will people say?

And then her gaze locks with Salem Sarandon…

Once more, her world is turned upside down. Strange things start happening and Jo doesn’t know what to do. Is the Necromancer still after her?

What makes her so special…?


If you want to read the starter excerpts of it, then they can be found here for the time being: Dark Side of the Moon. They hopefully won’t be there too long, though, because of the imminent site change. Still, if you’re wanting to read them, you can get as far as Chapter 3. I haven’t released any more onto the web so there’s no point in looking for it anywhere. I just hope you enjoy it, but any feedback is welcomed.
The main reason for putting it there was so that if any literary agents happened to stumble across it then they might taking a liking to it. It’s probably a very long shot, but as the Tesco’s tagline goes: every little helps.
IN OTHER NEWS…
I’m thinking quite seriously of getting a mini fridge. Earlier, my delightful brother decided that he would eat the stuff I’d bought for my pack up again. It irritates me so much. Maybe it’s just me, but I get overly annoyed with people who take my stuff. I think it actually goes back to when I was younger and I had a beautiful set of absolutely lovely colouring pencils. There was about a hundred of them and they shaded and blended so nicely. I was really proud of them. One day, somebody on my school table goaded me into sharing them with the rest of the table for one exercise. I ended up with less than fifty pencils left. Guess who refused point blank to share her stationary ever again?
Yep. That’s right. Me.
I’m a stickler for stationary. I’m happier buying new pens and paper than I am when I get chocolate. Fibre tipped pens are my favourite. They write so smoothly that you want to scribe random words just so that you can use the pen. I don’t think I can really describe the kick I get from new pens. It’s probably the kick that most women get from a pair of shoes. Shoes don’t really do it for me. Shoes are just a necessity. Maureen Johnson commented on twitter earlier about some guy having over a hundred pairs of unworn shoes. I guess I’d understand if he owned a shoe museum… but, personally, I think that’s way more than just excessive. Firstly, you don’t need that many shoes and, secondly, there’s no point in them if you can’t wear them! And so endeth the rant on unnecessary collections.
I’ve just read the seventh chapter of the last book in Kelley Armstrong’s Darkest Powers Series. The book isn’t out yet, but Kelley is releasing chapters free to read online while we lead up to the publication date. When it’s published I will be buying it. I have the first two books in this YA series and I’m working on collecting her adult urban fantasy books. I have to admit that she’s one of my favourite authors of all time. I picked up No Humans Involved on the off chance because the cover and the blurb appealed to me. It was stacked on the small supernatural bookcase in Waterstones. I didn’t think that it would hook me quite as much as it did. It was real and, yet, so unreal at the same time. It was the first time I’d been excited by a new book in ages. There seems to be this strange passage between junior school and the end of secondary school where the kind of fantasy books you want to read are not always available. Either they’re too grown up or they’re not grown up enough or they’re just not the kind of genre you want to spend your time on. Maybe you disagree, but that was what I found. The only books I really had were the Harry Potter books, but I found it hard to identify with a kid whose only problem seemed to be certain death most of the time.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the HP books, but Harry and Hermione always really annoyed me. Harry annoyed me because things that were practically smacking him in the face were just ignored until the end when Hermione would have to spell it out for him like he was learning his ABC. And Hermione annoyed me because she was so damned OCD and anal about everything. I don’t think I know anybody quite as anal as her, and I know quite a lot of people who are obsessive bookworms. The whole mortal enemies thing with Draco was quite irritating, too. I don’t know anybody who has a mortal enemy like that.
What can I say? It was real… but not to the extent that I, as a teenager, needed it to be to help me get through everything that I was dealing with. That, I think, is one of the problems with so many YA writers. They write brilliantly, but they aren’t teenagers any more. They can’t see it from the point of view of somebody in that world or with that state of mind. They may get really close, but the problem is that most of them are now the adults looking at the teenagers and assuming that most of them are slapped with ASBOs and community service and whatnot for heinous crimes that they committed whilst wearing hoodies.
I started Dark Side of the Moon when I was fifteen. I’ve edited it since then, but I’ve saved most of the dialogue and thought processes that I wrote down in it because my main character was supposed to be fifteen at the time. The old adage is that you write what you know. That’s what I did and I hope that it really has made everything my MC (Jocasta) was going through seem more true to her level of maturity. I think it does. Nevertheless, that is just my opinion. Other people may have an entirely different view on it. I can only hope that that isn’t the case.

I Guess It’s Just A Silly Song About You & How I Lost You & Your Brown Eyes

Decided that I’m going to go out on Friday for a drink, because, other than needing one (I’m not an alcoholic but I seriously need to let my hair down after the pile of stress that’s fallen on my head lately), it’s going to be a late birthday drink. I plan on taking my new camera (who is called Jeremy after a character in a book that I’ve read) so I can snap some lovely photos of the pandemonium that will undoubtedly ensue. Besides, I rarely see people. I’m working on the recluse thing… but I guess I kind of like a bit of human contact once in a while.

‘I guess it’s just a silly song about how I loved you and how I lost you and your brown eyes…
Your brown eyes…’

This song makes me think of somebody but we’ll forego the usual tag as if he ever reads this it may make him feel self-important and that’s not what we want, is it? I was talking to a friend earlier and she mentioned a particular date. It took a moment for me to register quite why it had made me stop. Then I realised that it was because, last year, it was the date of the first foam party I went to. It was also the day before he dumped me. It’s branded on my brain, I guess. To be honest, though, I hadn’t really thought about it until my friend mentioned it. When she did it felt like getting hit over the head with something. I was suddenly peculiarly dizzy. It was probably just a moment of silliness.
I completed editing Chapter 7 of Dark Side of the Moon. It’s improved immensely. If I had some proper free time, then I would get on and start Chapter 8. I want to get it all edited and straightened out so that I can send it off to a literary agent. It’s urban fantasy, so I’ll need to research some urban fantasy agents first, but it would help to have the manuscript finished off to a higher standard before I even contemplate that again. I mean, I tried before but I had no idea what I was doing. If it hadn’t been for the introduction of twitter, I think I would have just blundered on regardless, so I think I owe Andrew McCluskey (NAL) a thank you, there, as he was the one who tried to get me to join and eventually succeeded… and now I have more followers than him in a shorter space of time – not that anyone is counting!
Anyway, yeah…
If I hadn’t joined twitter I wouldn’t have seen what the literary agents around the world were saying about the queries and submissions that they received. It’s opened my eyes a lot more to the world of seeking publication. There are so many helpful authors on there, too. In fact, what I would suggest to anyone seeking to submit like I am is the following:
  • Join twitter
  • Add authors & literary agents on there (you can usually find them by sifting through the lists of other authors & publishing houses or shops like Waterstones & WH Smith)
  • Get involved in some of the hash tag conversations such as #litchat and read hash tags such as #queryquotes – they will give you a better understanding.
  • Buy The Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook and Writers’ Market
  • Then buy Wannabe A Writer – all three of these books are really informative from the technique of writing to contacting agents/publishers and their contact details to do so.

If you’re reading this and you’re trying to get an agent or a publisher then good luck and I hope that helped. It’s helped me so far – but I’m not signed yet… so I may still be wrong.

If you have any tips you’re willing to share with me then please feel free to comment!

Where: On my bed

Listening to: Brown Eyes – Lady GaGa

Tabs open: SD chatroom, Facebook

Programs open: Msn, Chrome, WMP, MSWord

(Lyrics in the title are from Brown Eyes by Lady GaGa)