Teaser Tuesday - Mystic Taxi

The results of Karin Tabke's First Line contest are delayed this week, but hopefully they'll be up be the end of the day. I'll report tomorrow whether or not I made the cut.

Here's an excerpt from my WIP, a steampunk urban fantasy called Mystic Taxi:

He felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see Gerald holding a small atomizer bottle. Henry grabbed it and squeezed the bulb to release a fine mist into the air. It smelled tropical. Coconut and orchids? It reminded him of those fruity drinks human women liked so much.

The hose with the vegetable sprayer swayed from side to side, its energy waning. The scent seemed to be working. It started to retreat back to its hole beside the sink when it stiffened as if something attracted its attention.

Henry glanced behind him and saw Gerald standing out in the open.

Shit.

Henry whirled back around just as the sprayer swiped at a butcher knife lying on the counter. It flipped it up and batted it like a baseball. The knife shot through the air, going straight for Gerald's head. Henry tried to block its path but was impaled through the chest.

He grunted, Gerald gasped, and the sprayer retreated in a flash to its hole.

"You malicious little Snit." Henry was ticked off now. He grabbed the old coffee maker and flipped up its lid. Eyes hot, he directed his will at the unruly demon, and within seconds a thin blue mist swirled up from the hole beside the sink. It drifted lazily to the coffee maker and disappeared inside. Henry snapped the lid shut, wiped his thumb across his chest where the knife still protruded, and jabbed it onto the machine to leave his mark.

"My brand. My will. And so you are bound."

Marketing Monday

The silence is deafening. Not a word on the publishing front. No news is no news.

I entered the first few pages of Mystic Taxi in the New Mexico RWA chapter's Rebecca contest. The deadline isn't until the end of May, but they're only taking the first 30 entries in each category, so I decided not to put it off or I'm sure I'd forget.

I discovered another fun online contest called Chase the Dream. It's sponsored by Leigh Michaels and Rachelle Chase. Enter the first 1000 words of your novel and Rachelle will pick her favorite as a finalist for the week. It's weekly, so you can enter more than once. The contest will end some time in March, when all the finalist's entries will be put up for vote by readers. The prizes are really great, too. This is definitely a worthwhile contest for writers.

It's a cold, cold day today here in Central Oregon. There's a few inches of fresh snow on the ground, and a clear blue sky above. It's not expected to get above 20. Brrrr...

Tomorrow I'll post another excerpt from Mystic Taxi, and announce whether or not I made it to the next round of Karin Tabke's First Line contest. I think it will be down to 40 out of the initial 100, and lines have added up now to 7 each. It's an interesting contest to follow and root for your faves, though most of my favorites have already been cut. Sniff. We'll know the results some time tonight.

Freestyle Friday

Kinsey and Sammy

As you can see on the right hand side of this blog, I've joined the Twitter tweeters. You'll also notice I don't do a good job of it. TGIF? WTF? I just couldn't think of anything else to say at the moment.

A writer friend of mine had a baby girl this morning. Yay, Christa! This is wee one #2, and now we're all waiting for her to post pictures on her blog and to see which one of us won her guess-the-baby's-weight contest.

Puppy Update: Kinsey is becoming a little easier to handle (ie my husband and I are suffering less blood loss). She's still high energy, but she's more focused and listens better now. I discovered a spray bottle with water really helps get her attention. She actually likes getting squirted, but what it does is make her stop doing whatever she's doing, like grabbing the banana off the table or the newspaper out of my husband's hands. I've enrolled her in puppy classes that start February 3.

Speaking of puppies, did you know dogs love sweet potatoes? Our local pet supply store sells a line of sweet potato treats for dogs. The things are hard as rocks, and I bought Kinsey the ones that look like dog bones. Expensive! They're just dehydrated pieces of sweet potato, so I decided to make some myself, though mine are more like sweet potato chips. Kinsey loves them like nothing else! So I'm sharing the recipe so you can make these yummy treats for your own dogs:

Take 2 or 3 sweet potatoes (organic is best for your dog), slice them length-wise about 1/4" thick. Lay the slices on a baking sheet and bake at 250 degrees for 3 to 4 hours. The longer they bake, the harder they'll get.

How about a healthy human treat? I discovered this by accident one day. I like cottage cheese, and I like dried cranberries, so I thought why not mix them together? It's a surprisingly tasty combination.

Did I mention Mystic Taxi is still in the running for Karin Tabke's First Line contest? I think we're up to seven lines now. I'll know by next Monday whether or not I made the next round.

On the publishing front, though any news about my book is still pending, I just found out that Pocket Books and Juno Books signed a co-publishing agreement! That's very exciting because it creates another opportunity for Knight's Curse. My agent emailed me today saying they're on it. So that's encouraging.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Thursday Thoughts

I haven't blogged about craft stuff for a while, so I thought I'd talk about beginnings today. Beginnings have become all the rage lately among writing-related blogs and forums. It's like if you don't nail down that first page, or perfect the hook that invites someone to read your first page, you're SOL.

There are a lot of ways to start a novel, not all of them good. We're familiar with those throat-clearing starts, the one where the writer is warming up to the story and needs to get all that preliminary set-up crap out of the way, like weather and the character waking up and what a tough childhood he had. Yawn. So we'll leave those as given no-nos and go on to some other first page killers.

I don't think readers can always identify what turns them off when they read the first page of a novel, but a lot of the reasons agents give for passing on a project would probably apply. Here are a few to consider:

• Opens with rhetorical question(s).
• The first line is about setting, not about story.
• Not enough happens on the first page.
• The opening contains clichéd phrases and/or situations (i.e. a character shakes his head to clear the cobwebs, character runs away from an unknown assailant, etc. )
• The main character responds to an unnamed thing (e.g., something dead in a bathtub, something horrible in a closet, someone on the other side of her peephole…) for more than a paragraph without naming it, creating false suspense.
• The characters talk about something (a photo, a person, the kitchen table) for more than a line without describing it, creating false suspense.
• The unnamed protagonist cliché: The woman ran through the forest... The man hid the knife in his pocket... yadda, yadda.
• Fake suspense created by some relevant fact that's kept from the reader for longer than a paragraph.
• The character spots him/herself in a mirror, in order to provide an excuse for a physical description.
• The first page is straight narration that doesn't involve the character doing anything.
• Too much physical descriptions in the opening paragraph, rather than action or conflict.
• When the first lines are dialogue, the speaker is not identified.
• The book opens with a flashback, rather than what's going on now.
• Descriptive asides pull the reader out of the conflict of the scene.
• No conflict.
• Too much repetition.
• Too many generalities.
• Stakes are not high enough.
• Story is written in the second person.
• The narrator speaks directly to the reader (“I should warn you…”), making the story hyper-aware of itself and thereby tossing the reader out of the story.
• When characters tell one another things they already know.
• The tag lines are more revealing than the dialogue. ( “She squawked.” "He growled.")
• The writing switches tenses for no apparent reason.
• The action is told out of chronological order.
• Took too many words to reveal what happened.
• Dull and/or awkward writing style.
• The writing falls back on common shorthand descriptions: “She did not trust herself to speak,” “She didn’t want to look…”
• Too many analogies/metaphors/similes per paragraph.
• Purple prose and overwriting
  
• Melodramatic opening
  
• Makes the reader laugh at it, not with it.
• Too much unnecessary explanation.
• Unmotivated characters.

I'm sure there are more that just these. Can you add to the list? Did anything on here make you go back to look at your first page? Do any of these opening bloopers rate high on your pet peeve-0-meter?

Wednesday Weirdness

I use Google Alerts to notify me whenever my name or titles of my work come up. It typically only finds me listed as a link on other people's blogs, which is flattering. I'll occasionally find a book review of one of my published novels. But yesterday I was alerted to something I'd never have imagined.

There's a comic strip on the web with a character named Karen Duvall. I know, what are the odds? Google alerted me to a blog called The Hathor Legacy, and there was an interview with comic strip writer T. Campbell. I didn't read the entire interview, but Mr. or Ms. Campbell writes a strip called Penny & Aggie about teenage girls and high school life. One of the less than savory characters in the comic is Karen Duvall. I guess it's a fairly popular web comic for teens because it has a very active forum. I read a couple of the strips. Not horrible, but not quite ready for newspaper syndication, either.

Teaser Tuesday - Mystic Taxi

Gerald opened the door and sparks flickered around the door frame. Trudy must have had someone set wards there, which was smart since she appeared to live alone. The wards deactivated when Gerald used her key.

The two of them rushed into the apartment, bodies crouched low and arms held over their heads, but no missiles hurled in their direction. The noises were all coming from the kitchen.

Mia, Trudy's demon, had possessed a large carpet sweeper at some point and rammed it into the dining room table and chairs. The chairs lay on their sides and the table sat askew. A vegetable sprayer attached to a hose in the sink was now waving in the air like a snake, slamming into cupboards and sweeping through stacks of dishes on a double row of shelves on the wall. Broken glass and china lay all over the hardwood floor and granite counter tops.

Nothing made a mess quite like a wrathy demon on the warpath.

"Stay here," Henry told Gerald.

"But what if you--?"

"It can't hurt me. And if it does, I'll heal." Though despite his body's ability to swiftly mend itself, he wasn't impervious to pain.

Marketing Monday

If you caught my post on Friday, you'll know the news isn't good. A couple more rejections without helpful feedback. There's a downside to writing something original. If it's too original in these tough economic times (I know, I'm sick of that phrase, too), no one wants to take a risk. So potentially popular books aren't getting snatched up like they should be. I'm ever hopeful my agent will find the editor who will share her vision and enthusiasm for Knight's Curse.

As some of you may already know, Absolute Write was down over the weekend. The withdrawals were painful. I alleviated my agony by hanging out in the AW chatroom, though the conversations often devolved into irrelevancies. Still, there were some familiar "faces" and that was comforting. It's interesting how much we depend on peer groups, and how important they become to our writing process. We typically write in a vacuum and having other writers to talk to at any time, day or night, is a balm to the lonely writer's soul. No one understands a writer like another writer.

My WIP needs a good whipping. I'm on the home stretch and slowing down. I need to regroup and outline upcoming chapters. Still having fun, but it's a challenge.

The new pet gate is up, and I'd post a picture of it, but my camera's battery is dead. I need to recharge it. Anyway, what an amazing difference it makes to our decor. I love it! And fat cat makes it through the little cat gate without any problem. I was so worried he'd get stuck trying to escape and Pupzilla would nip at his backside. However, the puppy is still small enough that she can get through the little cat opening, too, but fast as she's growing, she won't be able to slip through much longer.

Okay, back to work...

Thursday Thoughts on a Friday

I really, really need to set up a pet gate to divide the house into 2 parts. The barricade we have up isn't working anymore. Kinsey has gotten too big, and too smart. She barrels over all the obstacles we've set up like an Olympic athlete running the hurdles. And now we're having trouble stepping over the clutter without falling ourselves.

Rather than describe it to you, here's what I'm talking about:

Such a lovely addition to our decor, huh? Blech. Today that's going to change. Kinsey and I are going down to Petsmart to buy a new pet gate that's on sale and has a small cat door for the cats to venture through as the mood strikes. Problem is that my big bruiser kitty, Teddy, may not fit. I mean, this animal is enormous. He's 30 pounds at least, and quite a wide load. But we're going to try it and maybe make a few adjustments with Ted in mind.

I'm having a blue day. Heard from my agent and we got a couple more rejections. She has a few more publishers to try, and she's going back to 2 she's already submitted to, only targeting different editors. Fingers crossed!

Don't feel much like writing today. I hit a wall in a scene anyway and need to think about what to do next. I might post a question about it on the Absolute Write Water Cooler forum. I always get great suggestions over there, except the site appears to be down temporarily.

I did some invoicing of design clients yesterday, so I hope to see a few checks arrive in the mail next week. Sure do need them. Things are very lean right now.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Interviewed at Headdesk

I was fortunate to be interviewed by Creative A on her blog, Headdesk. She asked some interesting questions, so if you're curious how I answered them, take a look.

What's Up Wednesday - Tagged!

I was tagged by Chan to list six things that make my happy. Yikes. It shouldn't be that hard, but happiness is so subjective, you know? Like there's satisfied happy, you know the kind of happiness that's simple as having a hot cup of cocoa in front of the fireplace on a snowy day. Then there's deliriously happy, the kind that has you dancing in the street because you just won the lottery.

I'll have to stick with the simple things because the deliriously happy category never happens for me.

1. My three cats. Just seeing them puts a smile on my face. They're all so sweet and loving. I'd include my puppy, but she induces more stress than happiness at this stage in her young life. I'm always on edge when she's awake and on a tear.

2. My pajamas. Seriously. I could stay in them all day. Aside from them being comfortable, they give me a sense of comfort from the inside. They make me think of cuddling up with a mug of something warm while reading or watching a good movie. They symbolize all the the good stuff in life.

3. Reading good books. Writers read, and so do I, but not enough. I consider it a guilty pleasure. I reward myself with reading, so if I don't feel I deserve a reward, the reading goes on the back burner. Plus, I need to fill my free time writing, not reading. But when I do read, it definitely makes me happy.

4. When my agent contacts me. It can be email or by phone, but I always get excited to hear from her, regardless of whatever news she might have. Just knowing she's on my side, the advocate for my book, gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

5. hulu.com Yes, this website makes me quite happy. I can watch many of my favorite shows there because I usually miss them when they're on television. The husband is normally glued to football or the weather channel, so I sit beside him, laptop and earphones plugged in, and watch whatever I want without disturbing him.

6. My car. I really love my car. It's a 2002 Hyundai Santa Fe and the absolute best car EVAH! Comfortable, fun to drive, good gas mileage, reliable, and unbelievably good in snow. I can listen to cassettes or CDs, and long trips are a real pleasure. I always feel safe and secure whenever I'm driving my car.

Okay, now I get to tag six people to list their 6 happy things. Here they are:

Paty Jager
Elizabeth Naughton
Tasha
Authoress
Deborah Wright
Bryn Greenwood

The rules are as follows: link to the person who gave you the award; write down six things that make you happy; post the rules; tag six others and let them know you’ve done it; tell the person who tagged you when your entry is up.

Teaser Tuesday - Mystic Taxi

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, but there was no marketing news to report. I heard from my agent today, who just returned to the office after the holidays. She's had the flu and now I'm sure she has tons of work to catch up on. Maybe news next week?

I'm still in the running for Karin Tabke's First Line contest. There are now fifty contestants left. It will be down to 45 next Monday.

Speaking of marketing, there's a wonderful Q&A interview with four agents over at Poets & Writers. It's a long article, but it contains some great information, so you really should check it out (if you're a writer). The agents interviewed are quite candid with their responses.

There's an uplifting article from The New York Times that updates the state of reading in America. It's improved over last year! More readers mean better book sales, or so we hope.

It wouldn't be Tuesday if I didn't post a teaser, so here's a short excerpt from Mystic Taxi:

He pulled up to the curb in front of her aunt's Brooklyn apartment building. "I'll wait here."

"Ah, come on, Mr. Paine. Won't you come inside? My Aunt Alva is a mean cook, and she knows how to cook for spawnsters, since half our family is Hellspawn." She didn't really want him to come in, but how else would she win him over? "Ain't you hungry?"

"I'm fine. Just get me my demon boxes and I'll go."

"Well, my belly's so empty I'm fartin' cobwebs."

He gave her a horrified look. "You eat with that mouth?"

She rolled her eyes. No sense of humor. "I'm gonna have my supper before I fetch your boxes, so come in or stay out in the cold. Up to you."

He shivered and switched off the engine.

"Great!" Wanda smiled and pushed at the door, which opened so fast it nearly swung her out onto the sidewalk with her still holding the handle.

"Mystic, cut it out. We're almost done with this… this…" He waved a hand at Wanda as if unsure what to call her.

She ignored the insult and kept her smile. "Is there something I can do for your, uh, Mystic? Bless her heart."

Henry offered a sardonic grin. "Nice try."

Thursday Thoughts

Nothing much was up on Wednesday, so no blog post. Today is Thursday, closer to Friday, and I'm looking forward to the weekend. The husband will be home so he can help look after the puppy, however it's NFL Playoffs time, so he'll be pretty much worthless in that regard.

We almost lost our FOX station in Bend. Honest. FOX was negotiating its contract with our one and only cable company here, Bend Broadband (can you say monopoly?), and they were going to charge BB a fee for transmission rights. It's free over the airways if you have an antenna, but BB would have to pay for it because they're the only game in town here. When I thought I'd no longer get to see some of my favorite shows (Bones, House, Fringe, etc.), I started checking into satellite companies, thinking that would be the way to go. Only problem is the satellite companies don't offer local network stations here in Bend. WTF? Central Oregon is NOT that small. We have Costco!

So while negotiations between BB and FOX went on, with BB refusing to pay, FOX withdrew their signal and the channel went away. Blue screen. Gone. Ack! I couldn't believe they'd do that. My husband was chewing his nails because he was going to miss one of the playoff games on Sunday. So we got out our older, little tv out of my office and set it on top of the big one in the living room. My husband hooked up its antenna, added a foil accent (what's an antenna without foil), and voila! We got FOX. We could hardly see the picture, but we had reception, such as it was. Lots and lots of snow. But the sound was good.

So we we're both thinking that this will be the state of tv watching in our home. The hub watches more than I do, but I wasn't at all pleased with the foil decorating accent or the tvs stacked like a snowman. Picture a scene from a 70's sitcom: "Okay, just a little more to the left... wait, that's it!... No, go back. There. No, no, no, you had it a second ago, just push it a little more forward..." Heaven help me. One of the cats did enjoy the foil, though. She kept trying to bat it off the antenna.

So there we were, watching tv on Monday night -- I had the laptop on my lap and my husband was watching-- when he says: "Hey, look! FOX is back!" There was much rejoicing. BB and FOX had worked out a deal. Subscribers will pay more I'm sure, but it won't be that much. From what I read in the paper, the squabble was over an extra penny a day per subscriber. Hey, I'll forego my annual latté for a year's worth of FOX shows. They're only the best network station ever!

So that's my excitement for the week. There could be more later, who knows? It is only Thursday, after all...

Teaser Tuesday - Mystic Taxi

Good news! Mystic Taxi made it to the fourth round of Karin Tabke's First Line Contest. Woo hoo!

Now for another teaser from Mystic Taxi, my steampunk urban fantasy in progress.

Henry knocked and the flashing stopped. Well, that was a good sign. He waited a full minute before turning the knob and pushing his way slowly inside. He'd barely stepped across the threshold when a fireball erupted from across the room and hurled straight for him.

It exploded in a wall of flame that covered Henry from head to toe. The heat felt good after the frigid conditions outside. Hellspawn were impervious to fire.

"Hey, that was nice. Can I have another?"

The oven sat in silent darkness, pouting.

"Look, buster, you gotta get a grip. I understand, okay? You need a new master, someone to tell you what to do. And I'll find you one."

Wanda cleared her throat.

"Or maybe it would be better if you return home for a while. See the old neighborhood in Hell. Catch up with the family?"

The oven shook and began to glow. Henry took that as a no.

"You want to go free, right?" he asked the demon.

The oven's door flapped open and shut. Henry took that as a yes. From its behavior, he could tell this demon was a Snit, which is slightly more aggressive and not as playful as an Imp.

"I have something to help calm your nerves." He stalked up to the oven, removed the cork tops on both vials, and dribbled their contents over the oven.

It began to glow again, and not in a happy way. Smoke puffed out of its burner plates.

Marketing Monday

Today is the first day of the new week of the new month of the new year. Woo! So it should be a good one, right? Most of the publishing industry is back at their desks today and the wheels begin turning again. My agent is still on holiday break and won't be back in the office until Wednesday. So I don't plan on hearing news for a while.

There's snow on the ground and the sky is pale blue with plenty of sunshine. But it's freezing cold, so I won't be getting out in it. I have lots of work to do today anyway.

I'm eager to find out if I made the cut for the next round of Karin Tabke's First Line contest. I probably won't know until late this afternoon. It's down from 100 to 60 entries, and I'm still in, but five will be cut from the 60 that are left. Will I make it through? I'll let you know tomorrow when I post my weekly teaser for Mystic Taxi.

I took advantage of the after holiday sales and ordered my grandsons their birthday presents. Two were born in February, one at the end of January. Their gifts should arrive by tomorrow so that I can ship them off before next month.

Well, the puppy's up from her very brief nap, so I better play with her before she tears up the house. Have a great Monday!

Freestyle Friday

I need to write this quick while the puppy's sleeping! Whenever she's up and running around, I can't sit for five minutes without having to get after her about something. We've puppy-proofed the best we can, but she somehow finds new things to chew or break or tear. My living room floor looks like a doggy toy store, but it's not enough for her. And she's figured out a way to get over the barricade that keeps her out of the other half of the house. I'm a wreck. I should probably put her in doggy day care for a day just to give myself a break.

The New Year got off to an unhappy start when we lost our electricity for a few hours yesterday. It was horribly windy and a transformer must have blown somewhere. It wasn't so bad while it was still light out, but when it started getting dark, I freaked out a little. I have a flashlight and candles, but our fireplace is electric/gas and there was no heat. I imagined myself sitting in the dark all night, bored to tears with a puppy nipping and chewing on me. Then the electricity came back on and I was unbelievably thrilled! I ran through the house and turned on every single light. Then reset all the clocks. Life is good once again.

I found out about this really cool website called The Gender Genie. You paste an excerpt of over 500 words into the box and it "reads" it to determine if the author is male or female. I found it very interesting that when I pasted something written from my male character's point of view, the Genie thought it was written by a male author. When I pasted a excerpt from my female character's point of view, it determined the author was female. Awesome!

There's a personality reader called The Typealyzer. If you have a blog, you give it your blog's URL and it will tell you your personality. It says I'm an ESFP - The Performers. Here's the definition of what that means:

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead - they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

They enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation - qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

If you have a blog, take the test. It's interesting. I'd say the assessment of mine is pretty accurate.

The puppy is still sleeping. Yay! I'm going to work on chapter 18 of Mystic Taxi before she gets up to ruin my day. I love her dearly, but man, she wipes me out.

Happy New Year!

Wishing you all the best for 2009!