Step Four: Keeping Up The Pace

Posted on August 9, 2011 by Ileandra Young

First of all…

100 POSTS!!!
Fireworks, photo from wikimedia commons, credit: Alex Sims

I was going to do something special and wonderful for this post, but, in the end, I figured that the one year anniversary of the blog is more important. I’ll make a special note of my 500th post instead, because I’ll have a lot more to reflect on at that point. However, I am pleased to say I’ve made it this far and I do feel quite proud, so insofar as that, I’ll acknowledge this little marker and give myself a pat on the back.

Now… step four. Its been interesting so far maintaining the flow, keeping up with my schedule of one submission a week. You’d think it would be easy, what with the fact that the piece is all done and just needs to go into envelopes, but spending the time making sure that its all perfect, that each cover letter is written specifically for the agent in question is tricky. And each time I do it, if I slightly need to amend my CV then I’ll do that too. The literary CV by the way, not my ‘here, read this; I’m sure you’ll want to employ me, CV.’

So far, so good however. And my search continues for reputable agents who will be able to represent my work. I did get a bit of a fright on Saturday when the Phoenix Writers talked about agent horror stories, but to be honest, I’m in a position where the market is rammed tight with vampire books. If that is the book I’m going to push then I’m going to need help. Besides that I really don’t care about making masses of money. Sure it would be nice to make some, but more than anything I just want to share my story and then keep writing more. That’s all. Its not my priority though, so I’m not overly concerned about an agent taking 15-20% of my £1.99 profit. *snerk*

I’m sure that will change, by the way, humans by their nature are naturally greedy, but while my attention is on getting published at all, the money isn’t such a big deal.

So I’ve made four submissions to different agents that I know are interested in fantasy/horror books. I’m going to keep making submissions to these people. Oh and on Sunday I tidied up my office to prepare and make space to store my rejections. I don’t know why I keep going on about it, but for some reason I’m looking forward to it. Maybe its just to get the responses at all? I keep going through my last file of rejections from 2003/4 when I was about 19. I really wasn’t kidding when I sent those out; letters were coming back to me at a rate of two a week. I’ve got to see if I can do that again; not least because the product I’m trying to get help for is significantly better than when last I tried. All the work I’ve done on it has made major changes to plot and style which are all for the better.

I found John Jarrold’s website yesterday. I kept thinking about him because his name popped constantly at Alt Fiction and each time it did it was with reverence and awe. And just a tiny touch of terror. I’m not scared of him – he seemed pleasant enough when he talked to people – but I am intimidated by what he represents. He is one of those names in the spec genre that people use all the time of an example of who things should be. The idea of submitting something to him makes part of me wonder who I’m kidding and how dare I? While another part of me wants to turn the clock forward so I can come back home and make the submission. Its a curious mix of anticipation and dread that I’m just not used to.

Then again, it goes with the territory, doesn’t it?

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Sample Sunday – 07/08/2011

Posted on August 7, 2011 by Ileandra Young

Well, for my first Sample Sunday piece, here is a piece from my as yet unnamed high fantasy piece. Still a WIP.

Kane strained against the ropes. Incredible pain racked his body, but the physical agony was nothing compared to his fear over T’keyah.

He had to save her!

The vampires crowded close, shouting, laughing, screaming like animals. The circle of sweaty bodies bowed down and Kane felt their heat on his skin.

There was one dagger already, the blade thrust deep in his stomach. He could feel the sharp edges scraping against his flesh and begged for the release of unconsciousness. The vampires refused to let him faint, slapping his face and splashing water at him each time darkness threatened to take over.

With a wordless roar, Kane twisted towards the hand on his cheek, catching a probing finger between his tiny daemon fangs and biting down. Defiance gave him strength but the white-hot pain of a second dagger soon sapped it away.

The blade passed through his right palm, shattering bones there before slamming into the ground.

He screamed.

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80 Post Challenge – Post 21

Posted on August 6, 2011 by Ileandra Young

Describe the most outrageous thing anyone has dared you to do.

Heh, okay, well I don’t know if it counts as outrageous, but for some reason I’m having trouble thinking of anything else! A shame as I’m sure I’ll come up with something.

The first thing that came to mind was when I was at school, probably about 15 and we were in Germany on our exchange trip. Giggling and silly, as young girls are wont to be, I was dared to pop into the nearest Chemist and try to buy a box of condoms. But only speaking German. Well considering where I was and the point of the trip, it shouldn’t have been a problem, but it was nightmarish, let me tell you!

But that’s not what I was thinking of. No, no. I have in mind a party I went to some time ago with a cluster of friends and some other people I hadn’t met before. It was nice actually; a chance to meet up with folk I know and like and get to know others that I never knew I never knew. Still talk to them now and they’re lovely people, just as an aside.

We played a bunch of games (as I do whenever I’m with friends) and one of these was truth or dare. It all looked fine and rosey and completely innocent until it got silly (again, as things tend to do). It got to what more civilised people than me might call ‘dirty’ (this is where you all gasp and put your hands to your mouths… or not).

The dares had categories, greed, orange and red I believe with red being the ‘rudest’ or the most severe. I think I ended up with a red one at some point, but my dare was to pick an item from a covered tray and perform a deviant sexual act upon it! Hehee. Yes, it was as funny as it was deliciously silly.

So in goes my hand, fishing around on this tray for something that I can only pick out by feel. There aren’t even any clues as to what might be under there, just several things that are edible. By the time I stop giggling and manage to get my hands on one of the cups, people are already in bits. I pull out the cup and tip it out on my hand and there’s a grape. bunch of green grapes from OpenClipArtA single grape. And then a whole room full of people watching me expectantly.

I must admit, for some time I really wasn’t sure what to do with the damn thing, but after a while I realised that the way I ate grapes usually might be construed as ‘deviant’ but anybody not paying real attention to what I’ve actually got in my mouth. So I proceeded to eat the grape. Slowly. I shan’t go into masses of detail, but can I just say, it really is the oddest thing I’ve ever done to a piece of food. Ever. ^_^

And for a dare it wasn’t all that bad either. There was another one that night actually, that will stick with me for a while. A dare to kiss a body part starting with each letter of the alphabet from A to Z going around the room. I didn’t get that one, but half of me wishes I did, because it got quite imaginative. I think we only made it down T before the giggling got too much. There are some who would probably consider that to be too much of an ice breaking exercise, but the room was certainly a deal more relaxed after that. People seemed to realise that we were just having a giggle.

Hmm. Doesn’t seem like much now actually. I think I should look into some more dares, maybe see if I can pick up something to tell you about another time. There is lots more of this challenge to go and some of them give me a chance to recap what I’ve said in previous posts. I’m not doing them in order either, so something that I talk about now could probably be supplemented later on with a story that either continues a previous post or links in with associated subject matter.

Hopefully by that point I will have had a couple more parties to go to! At the very least, there will be a LARP to talk about. Maybe I can ask someone there to give me a dare. Oooh, or to dare my character; that would be interesting. 😀

 

 

 

 

My 80 Post Challenge is brought to you with help from Tom Slatin’s 80 Journal Writing Prompts.

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Book Review: By Wizard Oak

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Ileandra Young

Author: Peter Crowther
Title: By Wizard Oak
Genre: Horror
‘It’s just a book that the folks of the small town of Magellan Bend recall reading. A little gruesome, perhaps… and, in more than one instance, not the reader’s usual fare. But it’s just a book. Nothing more.’

Okay, so I told you I’d talk about this book when I’d finished reading it. It took me a while, but I finished it last night and wanted to take a moment just to say ‘eeeep!’

Take a town, any old town and bring it forward to Halloween. Visit the people of this town and realise that slowly, steadily, most oddly, they are remembering people that just don’t exist. Family members, friends, even distant acquaintances you might have seen across the street while buying your own newspaper. Suddenly, you begin to remember them. Worse than that, you realise that they’re gone and have been for a long time.

As soon as I realised what was going on with this book I had trouble putting it down (which is a problem because I have my own damn book to write!). The witches of Magellan Bend have returned, as they always do (because… why not?), to glut themselves of a feast of memories. I love that idea, and I love the thought that they can twist things enough that in the opening chapter, the poor, screaming, sobbing children reach out to their parents to save them and realise, seconds before their demise, that there will be no help. Indeed, their parents are laughing and so is everybody else along the row of revellers lined up to watch the parade.

The image of a man, one Jack Westerman, trying desperately to leave the town and yet coming back to the same spot over and over again, is comical as well as sad. You know, not only is he never going to escape, but he’s also not going to be the last.

There are lots of small things that stood out in this book for me; the short and snappy chapters, The Great Depression (ew) and how defeating the menace in the end really was ‘a piece of piss.’ Teehee.

I recall that when I won the book from the raffle at Alt Fiction, Peter found me afterwards and apologised. It was at that point that I promised I’d write about what I thought and I must say… all the things he apologised for are my absolute favourite parts! Who knew someone pissing on the floor could be creepy as well as just gross and unsanitary? :p Peter has done a fantastic job of not only maintaining the shudder-factor with this book, but by making it utterly different to anything else about witches I have ever read before. They may wear black dresses, pointy hats and have a couple of warts but that’s where any similarities to anything else stops dead and falls flat on its face. The story races along in scattered chunks which, as the tale progresses, knits together to form a full tapestry of how long these witches have been around, how much trouble and mayhem they’ve caused and how the memories of one fourteen year old boy can shake things up beyond repair. There is a descriptive grace to this book which now has me looking forward to this year’s Halloween.

The holiday (even if it isn’t really a holiday in this country) has steadily, over the years, lost its fear factor. Its no longer even remotely scary, instead its about sweets, money and silly costumes of fairies, cute Disney style witches and sheets with holes cut in the top- sorry I mean ghosts. Even when this tale pokes light fun at that, the creeping chill at the back of your neck is all the more palpable when the real witches, the real menace begins to stalk you through the darkness.

This is the first book I’ve read from the bundle I picked up at Alt Fiction. Its done well enough that I’ll be looking for more of Peter’s books when I have a gap. I do have another eleven books to get through however. And I’ve bought two more books since that event. So its going to be busy. However, just like I promised, I will continue to write about them; reviewing the story and style in my own way. I don’t read a lot of book reviews (though I’m beginning to), so I’m sure there are a lot of conventions out there that people might have in mind on how this is done. Well, just so you know, I’ll be doing them all in my own way and with my own voice. It should be fun.

Coming up soon, some crime by Lynda La Plante.

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Step Three: Acknowledgement

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Ileandra Young

I got my postcard back from the agents. ^_^ I must admit, I shouldn’t be too surprised that it did, since I made it as easy as I possibly could. I addressed it, stamped it and what not, but it was such a pleasant surprise to come through the door into the kitchen and find it among the post. I saw the massive Maltesers and thought ‘ooooh, that’s me!’

It was when I flipped it over that I had the best surprise. Rather than just whipping it back into the post, the agency editor has actually written a little something on it. She expressed thanks for the submission and that they would be in context again in six weeks, and then a little joke about the quote I included about chocolate.

It may be a small thing, but I really feel encouraged by that. It serves not only to remind them that I’m just a person at the other end of the book, but it reminds me that they are too! What woman after all, anywhere in the world, doesn’t have a special relationship with chocolate? I used this particular card on a whim, but I like that I was able to find a quote that matched it.

I bought a whole load more cards as well for the same sort of thing and I’m encouraged enough by this response that I’ll keep doing it. The other cards are supposed to be a reflection of my personality and sense of humour which, coupled with the quote I choose, will give an insight to me that I’m not able to include in my cover letter or literary CV. The new ones are a couple of prints either claimed or accredited to Banksy and some other just funny ones that made me giggle the second I saw them on the rack. That’s how I picked them, by the way; pictures that I knew I liked already (Banksy) or things that leapt out at me when I saw them. I figure those are the best way to show what I like and what I appreciate. Though one of them is a tad childish, hehee. I might send that one to a friend instead.

I need to get myself a folder now and some fat, white labels. Over the weekend I’m going to label the folder ‘REJECTIONS’ in big, black letters and put a smiley face next to it. Not necessarily to celebrate the rejection of my work (!) but to acknowledge that each rejection is another step closer to the agent who deserves to represent me. And I really do feel that is the right way to put it. I’m starting to build enough confidence in my work that I can submit it in the first place; therefore I feel that when (not ‘if,’ ladies and gentlemen) I get taken on, it will be an agent who has seen something and wants to run with it because the writing deserves it (and because they can sell it, obviously). There is risk involved with new authors, everyone knows that, but the people who take that plunge do get to reep the benefits.

Anyway that’s my first acknowledgement and I plan to send another pack out soon. Once I get two or three out I’ll be in a position of wanting to start something new as it will be the waiting game. I’ve never really been good at that.

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