Sorry for the late posting, but I was too tired last night after the gym to anything but eat ramen noodles and watch The Hangover.
First, I'd like to tell you that I have posted to my other blog, Music You Should Be Listening To and you can click here to check it out if you would like.
Since I'm quickly running out of finished stories to share with you (I'm notoriously bad at finishing things) I'm getting dangerously close to begin sharing chapters from my novel with you. This is both exciting and terrifying for me. But it's why I have this blog so it's time to man up, as they say.
My story entitled A Mouth Full of Teeth is about werewolves and vampires. I know this genre has been very popular as of late, and I'm a little worried that maybe it's been too overplayed lately and people will be like, "Ugh, not another vampire story." I'm hoping that isn't the case, or at the very least that the true fans of the genre - people like myself - will be into it regardless. I've been into vampires and werewolves ever since I was a little kid. They used to scare me back then, so much so that if I had to get up to get a drink in the middle of the night I would walk down the hall with my index fingers pressed together like a crucifix, but I still loved them, and my fascination with them has not waned with time.
Also, I would like to say that I started this story way before the vampire/werewolf craze came around. I'm pretty sure I came up with my characters and general story line before the first words of Twilight were ever typed up. Just keep that in mind when you start reading my excerpts. There are a few unintended similarities that I'm a little concerned about, and will need your opinion on.
A Mouth Full of Teeth is really the first of what I hope to be 3 novels. I'll go ahead and give you the premise now that I've had enough Jimmy to give me courage. The main character is Jade - she is the only female werewolf ever. Two supporting but very important characters are Jacob - a bad ass alpha male that she's in a very complicated relationship with (also a werewolf, this is the biggest and most problematic similarity to friggin Twilight) and their best werewolf friend Etienne - who is sort of the only one with his shit together and is everyone's source of guidance. The other main character in this story is Gabe - a human vampire/werewolf hunter. I tell the story in first person from both Gabe and Jade's point of view.
The story takes place in modern day Paris, France. Jade and her gang are there hunting down a rogue werewolf that has gone and killed too many people. Gabe and his father are in Paris hunting down the vampire that killed Gabe's older brother. Gabe and Jade meet by chance and become romantically involved without knowing the truth about one another. After a series of very unfortunate events they discover the truth about each other and that the things that brought them to Paris are closely linked. Shit hits the fan, and we find out if "love" really does conquer all. I'm not going to spoil the ending, but it's probably not what you expect. I tried to make this different from all the other human-meets-monster stories that are out there. At the very least there is a lot of action and violence, so that's fun.
Well, there it is in a nutshell.
So now I'm going to turn it over to you again, dear reader, and I really need you to respond and respond honestly. Does this sound like a story you'd want to read? Do you want to know more? Are you so sick of monster stories that you want to punch someone in the face?
That's all I have for now. I look forward to reading your thoughts.
Thanks for reading! =)
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Allow me to explain myself...
The real name of this blog should be The Path to Publication, I Hope....but that just doesn't sound as good.
I'm starting this blog to document and share my journey of trying to get a novel published and sold in a bookstore near you. I'm a total newbie to the publishing world and I really don't know what I'm getting myself into - although I like to delude myself that I do.
I'm blogging this experience because I need all the help I can get, be it help in the form of moral support or insider advice or connections...you know, the hook up, a guy who knows a guy. And I am looking to you, dear reader, to keep me motivated. I'm going to have to face a lot of rejection and a lot of self-doubt. I'm not gonna lie, it could get ugly. But if I succeed and I do get a book published, it could be a very beautiful thing. Except for the aftermath of the party I will throw if that happens....that probably won't be a pretty sight.
Now, I'm in the very early stages of my process. If we continue on with the journey metaphor, I'm still sitting in the kitchen tracing my finger along the road map to figure out where exactly I'm going. Some may say too early to start a blog about getting published, but there's no time like the present and if I held off on starting this I would convince myself not to do it.
My road map is a book I got for Christmas called "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published." (Hereafter referred to as The Guide.) The author of The Kite Runner said it was a must-have for the aspiring writer, so I feel pretty good about it, even though I never read The Kite Runner. Also in the book they use the guy who wrote 1001 Ways to Reward Employees as an example of successful publishing, and my boss has that book in her office. Although, if you ask me, she could stand to read through that bad boy again. Anyway, The Guide is a thick book and the authors seem to know what they're talking about and I think if I do what they say I'll have a good chance at getting published. At the very least I'll know how not to get published!
I'll leave it at that for tonight. I don't want to make this too long and take up too much of your valuable time. I do hope you come back though. I'll try and post to this as often as possible and I'll do my very best to make it entertaining. Thanks for reading!
BXPASA7FG6QF
I'm starting this blog to document and share my journey of trying to get a novel published and sold in a bookstore near you. I'm a total newbie to the publishing world and I really don't know what I'm getting myself into - although I like to delude myself that I do.
I'm blogging this experience because I need all the help I can get, be it help in the form of moral support or insider advice or connections...you know, the hook up, a guy who knows a guy. And I am looking to you, dear reader, to keep me motivated. I'm going to have to face a lot of rejection and a lot of self-doubt. I'm not gonna lie, it could get ugly. But if I succeed and I do get a book published, it could be a very beautiful thing. Except for the aftermath of the party I will throw if that happens....that probably won't be a pretty sight.
Now, I'm in the very early stages of my process. If we continue on with the journey metaphor, I'm still sitting in the kitchen tracing my finger along the road map to figure out where exactly I'm going. Some may say too early to start a blog about getting published, but there's no time like the present and if I held off on starting this I would convince myself not to do it.
My road map is a book I got for Christmas called "The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published." (Hereafter referred to as The Guide.) The author of The Kite Runner said it was a must-have for the aspiring writer, so I feel pretty good about it, even though I never read The Kite Runner. Also in the book they use the guy who wrote 1001 Ways to Reward Employees as an example of successful publishing, and my boss has that book in her office. Although, if you ask me, she could stand to read through that bad boy again. Anyway, The Guide is a thick book and the authors seem to know what they're talking about and I think if I do what they say I'll have a good chance at getting published. At the very least I'll know how not to get published!
I'll leave it at that for tonight. I don't want to make this too long and take up too much of your valuable time. I do hope you come back though. I'll try and post to this as often as possible and I'll do my very best to make it entertaining. Thanks for reading!
BXPASA7FG6QF
Sunday, March 27, 2011
I Could Have Been a Contender
The latest lesson in The Guide is all about putting together the proposal package for your book before submitting it for publication. I found myself getting very nervous as I read through the chapter. My stomach did a flip, my heart was in my throat, my hands were shaking and the whole time I was thinking, Am I ready for this? I'm not ready for this. This is too soon!
Though I want to have been published and sitting across from Matt Lauer yesterday, the idea of actually sending in a complete proposal and putting the ball in someone else's court makes me want to hide in bed with the covers over my head. And why is that?
Because I fear failure. More than I fear cockroaches.
I haven't had to deal with failure much in my life yet, and for that I am grateful. But the times I have had to face it down, were almost too much for me to handle. And it didn't help that the biggest failures of my life happened on the same day. That's right, I got dumped by the guy I was seeing hours before I found out that I didn't get in to grad school. Which might not have been quite so devastating if I had not been told things like a) "Where have you been my whole life?" and b) "Don't worry about it. You're a shoe-in."
But that wasn't enough. No, the gods of Failure were not done with me yet. Hours before I was to walk across the stage for my college graduation, I was standing in line alphabetically when I suddenly recognized the girl standing in front of me. She had been in the same group interview as me for grad school. It had taken me so long to recognize her now that her tattoos were showing and her steel, loop nose ring was in place. She was talking to the girl next to her and giggling in excitement about the classes she was going to take in the spring, and how well graduate orientation had gone.
After I recovered from the stinging slap of realization that she had gotten accepted into the program I had been rejected from, I looked off to the side and focused all my psychic ability on her thinking, please don't recognize me, please don't recognize me.
Well my friends, fate is a cruel mistress.
"Oh, hey! You were in the interview with me, weren't you?"
Somehow the muscles in my face found the ability to stretch into a smile. "Yes, I was."
"Did you get in?" The girl danced like a puppy, she was so excited about life. I could see she was just waiting to throw her arms around me in a celebratory hug, and quickly add me as a friend on facebook.
"No. I didn't."
Both her and the random girl beside her's faces fell flat into a droopy frown of disappointment and awkwardness. "Oh....Well did they say why?"
"They said that they had twice as many applicants as they ever had before, and they just had to draw a line somewhere."
"Yeah, I heard the same thing. They thought that so many people applied this year because the economy took a nose dive, and people want to go back to school. You should apply for the summer though! I bet less people apply for the summer."
That was a heaping slice of humble pie. But I swallowed it down the best I could and nursed my wounded ego with the belief that Everything Happens For A Reason.
So what if my book sucks? What if nobody wants to publish it? What if I fail at being an author too?
These are the thoughts I'm trying to contend with now.
On a much light note, I decided to change the design of this lovely blog. Not for any particular reason, really. I just felt like it. As my 9th grade geometry teacher once said, "It is a woman's prerogative to change her mind."
What do you think of the new digs? Good, bad, ugly?
And because I don't want you to leave this blog feeling down, and because the song is stuck in my head now, you can click here to watch the music video for "It's My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown.
(To my Midland, TX followers: If that doesn't bring back memories of birthday parties at KC Nutty Roller's, I don't know what does!)
Though I want to have been published and sitting across from Matt Lauer yesterday, the idea of actually sending in a complete proposal and putting the ball in someone else's court makes me want to hide in bed with the covers over my head. And why is that?
Because I fear failure. More than I fear cockroaches.
I haven't had to deal with failure much in my life yet, and for that I am grateful. But the times I have had to face it down, were almost too much for me to handle. And it didn't help that the biggest failures of my life happened on the same day. That's right, I got dumped by the guy I was seeing hours before I found out that I didn't get in to grad school. Which might not have been quite so devastating if I had not been told things like a) "Where have you been my whole life?" and b) "Don't worry about it. You're a shoe-in."
But that wasn't enough. No, the gods of Failure were not done with me yet. Hours before I was to walk across the stage for my college graduation, I was standing in line alphabetically when I suddenly recognized the girl standing in front of me. She had been in the same group interview as me for grad school. It had taken me so long to recognize her now that her tattoos were showing and her steel, loop nose ring was in place. She was talking to the girl next to her and giggling in excitement about the classes she was going to take in the spring, and how well graduate orientation had gone.
After I recovered from the stinging slap of realization that she had gotten accepted into the program I had been rejected from, I looked off to the side and focused all my psychic ability on her thinking, please don't recognize me, please don't recognize me.
Well my friends, fate is a cruel mistress.
"Oh, hey! You were in the interview with me, weren't you?"
Somehow the muscles in my face found the ability to stretch into a smile. "Yes, I was."
"Did you get in?" The girl danced like a puppy, she was so excited about life. I could see she was just waiting to throw her arms around me in a celebratory hug, and quickly add me as a friend on facebook.
"No. I didn't."
Both her and the random girl beside her's faces fell flat into a droopy frown of disappointment and awkwardness. "Oh....Well did they say why?"
"They said that they had twice as many applicants as they ever had before, and they just had to draw a line somewhere."
"Yeah, I heard the same thing. They thought that so many people applied this year because the economy took a nose dive, and people want to go back to school. You should apply for the summer though! I bet less people apply for the summer."
That was a heaping slice of humble pie. But I swallowed it down the best I could and nursed my wounded ego with the belief that Everything Happens For A Reason.
So what if my book sucks? What if nobody wants to publish it? What if I fail at being an author too?
These are the thoughts I'm trying to contend with now.
On a much light note, I decided to change the design of this lovely blog. Not for any particular reason, really. I just felt like it. As my 9th grade geometry teacher once said, "It is a woman's prerogative to change her mind."
What do you think of the new digs? Good, bad, ugly?
And because I don't want you to leave this blog feeling down, and because the song is stuck in my head now, you can click here to watch the music video for "It's My Prerogative" by Bobby Brown.
(To my Midland, TX followers: If that doesn't bring back memories of birthday parties at KC Nutty Roller's, I don't know what does!)
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