Saved

I had a scare last night—a big scare. While hurrying to save my new manuscript and vacate Starbucks before they locked me in (would that really be a bad thing?), I pulled out the jump drive from my laptop a touch too fast.

When I got home to continue writing, the document was gone. Gone. In its stead was a black hole. The entire file had disappeared.

Stupid me, I hadn't saved the manuscript to either my desktop or my laptop recently. The latest version I had was 6,000 words less. I could have restructured it, but the thought was disheartening.

After much frantic searching and calls to family members, I found a program to download that would save my poor book. For a mere $129 dollars (I say that sarcastically since I am in penny-pinching mode at the moment) I could recover the document. I bit the bullet and paid. Thankfully, I was able to recover everything. Around midnight, I finally went to bed with the peace of mind knowing that I had my book saved in three separate places.

Moral of this story? Triple, quadruple, quintuple save all your documents—especially books you're writing. I've learned my lesson. Have you?

Off now to email the document to myself just in case my house burns down and all my saved versions are incinerated. Can't be too careful. (And now I'm knocking on wood not to curse myself.)

Jessamine

Lightning flashed and thunder boomed. The earth shook with the roar of the heavens. No one would see her, shadow that she was, slinking along the abandoned street. Time to bury the thing and be done with it. Already it had caused more trouble than she cared for. A little trouble at times weren’t no problem. When that trouble took on life and opened its gaping jaws to swallow her down to hell, well, that was a tad much.

She weren’t no fool neither. Jessamine had all the smarts an urchin could gather. She knowed she was a pawn. Those big men could tell her sweet things till their tongues rotted, but she knew better. They lied, all the time. She weren’t no beauty, no matter what they said, just some street kid they plucked out of them filthy gutters like a rotting tomato. And they didn’t even come find her themselves. Sent some retarded lackeys to do the job for them. Why, even them priests with their visions and prophecies wouldn’t step down the street they dreamed ’bout.

Breath fogged in front of her petite nose as she peered around the corner of a crumbling building. Guards stood watch at the city gates, probably told to keep her inside. Well, them soldiers was dumber than dishwater. Couldn’t be helped, with such little pay. But it made sneaking around the city that much easier for her and her mates.

Those crummy boys hadn’t stood their ground, though, when them soldiers came rushing up to grab her all those weeks ago. Musta figured she was done for with all them swords a pointing at her little head. Couldn’t even find them tonight in their usual haunts when she’d looked. She’d just have to leave the city on her own, no help from anyone. She didn’t need no help, though. How many times she snuck past them foolish guards? Too many to count, considering she didn’t know her numbers so well.

Her chance to slip past came when watch changed for the night. Two sauntered off to greet replacements, the fools, leaving their backs open. Jessamine stole quick to the gate and slipped through the shadows as more lightning lit the sky. Holding her breath, she waited for the blinding light to leave her eyes. Seconds later, the echoing pound of thunder covered the sound of her feet thudding across the bridge.

Her kifed boots touched dirt on the other side while she paused to get her bearings, what with white spots dancing across her vision. Wind whipped long brown hair about her head as she spotted a grove off to her right. Perfect. She would bury the blasted necklace there. No use carrying the thing about her neck longer than she must, and then she’d be on her merry little way. Running for the trees, her stolen servants rags twisted about her legs in all that wind. Her hand closed about the bauble bouncing furiously on her chest. She dropped to her knees, ready to pull that thing off and thrust it into the ground, when lightning crashed and thunder boomed in unison.

All that light rushed straight to the ground in front of her where she’d wanted to plant the durned necklace. Instead of ridding herself of the thing, the metal chain fused securely around her neck with all that energy flowing around her.

“Aw, sh—” The world went black as a tree limb fell atop her pretty little head.

———

“Jasmine. Lady Jasmine.” Cold and water dripped down her face, getting her wet.

“T’aint my name.” Groggy, she tried to sit up, but firm hands pushed her back down. “Get that blasted rag off my face, you putrid—”

“My lady! That is no way to address your servants.” The chamberlain bustled about the room, shooing servants out.

“And I’m not ‘Your lady.’ Never been no lady, won’t never be one. Might as well throw me out on the street again for all the ‘Lady’ I’ll ever be.”

“Now, dear Lady, we’ve been over this. The priests saw you wearing the Jasmine Pendant in a vision of light. They saw the glory of your countenance beneath the filth in which you lived. It was they who brought you to us, the future savior of our kingdom. Who else is to rescue the captured prince and avenge our slain king?”

“Lay that ‘savior’ crap on me one more time and I’m likely to bring my dinner up all over your fancy little robe.” Jessamine pushed aside the serving girl and tried to sit up. Her head wobbled on her neck, and she fell against them soft pieces of fluff they called pillows. What had happened to her? She tried to ask when the chamberlain shushed her again.

“Sleep, Lady Jasmine. We’ll speak more after you’ve rested.”

“Sleep, my eye. Tell me now or I’ll wake the whole castle. You know I will.”

His face looked weary, but he sat on a chair beside the bed. “The guards found you at the foot of a tree struck by lightning. They say you were filled with the light of heaven though you were not burned. Not a hair on your head was singed.” He paused.

“Say it, or I scream,” Jessamine threatened.

“The pendant. We are, ah, unable to remove it from around your Lady’s neck. It seems the lightning fused it to your person and it is now permanently part of you.”

Jessamine gasped. Filthy liar! They’ve tried to make her wear that blasted thing at every moment, and now he says she can never take it off? They’ll see. Why she’ll . . . She felt about her neck and couldn’t locate the chain. How could he say it was there when it wasn’t?

Anger filled her face at his lies—until he brought up a mirror in front of her face that a servant had brought over from the dressing table. There, about her neck, was a delicate silver line that looked so much like the necklace tattooed upon her skin. Then right above the hemline of the nightdress she could see the white starburst of the flower pendant upon her pale skin. White as death it was. Her face paled to match, but still the outline was still clear.

She grasped for it, felt along her skin, but it was smooth as the day she was born. No bumps, no depression. It was as thought she was born with a horrid birthmark.

Those horrid priests had done this to her, cursed her for life. She would be their pawn for the rest of her days, unable to hide their mark upon her. Jessamine never should have stolen the necklace from that old crone. How could she have been so stupid?

Just one of them days

You know, there are times where I really hate hormones. They screw with your life when you least need it.

This past week has been full of "them days." Probably just a pre-spring, winter's-still-hanging-on funk. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I hate the fact that I'm not perfect. I hate messing up and making every mistake there possibly is to make. If I were better, smarter, wiser, then maybe my world wouldn't fall down around me so often.

No need to worry about me, folks. It's just one of them days, and it will pass. I'm sure you've had them as well. But for the moment, I really want to vent and get it all out.

I'm single. Never had a boyfriend. Never been on more than two dates with one guy. Mainly because I attract weirdos and psychos, but that's neither here nor there.

It's not that I'm desperately lonely or desperate to be married. It's more that I want to find someone I can be honest with, who I can love without worrying what he's always thinking of me. I want someone who will listen to everything I have to say without judging, and without me worrying that he'll hate me because I really am crazy when you get down to it. But that won't matter because he'll have to be crazy in his own ways to love me.

I want that bond with another human that one finds once in a lifetime, if then. Not much to ask for. I'm just asking for the world.

So me, as pathetic as I am at this moment, turn to the ether of the internet to pour out my sorrows and assuage my grief. Nothing tangible, really, just a sense of loss that I can't explain.

But another day moves on, and I must prepare for bed and get ready for the Groundhog Day that is my life. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Probably the biggest sense of loss is that I can't take my life in the direction I want it to go because I am dependent upon others for some of the choices I wish I could make for them. Marriage, book deal, travel, buying a home. All of those things are not in my control right now, and it kills me.

What is there to do, though, but stick with what I have and keep moving along. Like the good trained ferret I am, I will go about my life in the semblance it is now until I can shatter that monotony and shake it all up. I will persevere because there is nothing else I can do at the moment.

So, control what I can. Plant my garden. Write my books. Do my best at work. Plug along until it isn't quite so hard and the days don't feel quite as long.

It will get better. Always does. So no worrying about me, now. Just needed to vent, is all. Go back to your merry life and don't mind me.

The Authonomy Experiment

For those who've never heard about Authonomy.com, the brain child of Harper Collins UK, here's a basic summary:

Aspiring novelists can post part or all of the books to a community of writers who will vote for the top five books to be sent to editors at HC every month. Those books are then reviewed, and if Harper Collins so chooses, they can acquire those books for publication.

Why do I call this an experiment? Because HC is trying something new and unproven to, as they have said, flush out new talent. The bigger question, though, is has this experiment worked?

I can only offer the perspective of one writer who actively participated on the site for six months; from the day the beta version was opened to the general populace last September until just a few months ago. Just this weekend I deleted my account, so my comments and opinions will have no bearing on my standing within that online community.

It started out as a grand idea. "Beat the slush!" the site proclaimed. Get your chance to have an editor at a large publisher to read—and even better yet—acquire your book without having to deal with agents or the traditional route of querying. In all manners, it sounded like a great idea.

And for many purposes, it is a good idea, but not really in the way HC intended it. At the end of my sojourn there, I can positively say it helped me tremendously by connecting me with other writers who taught me more about the craft of writing than I had learned in the four previous years it took me to write my book. I learned to hone my craft through the critiques people offered on my writing, and through critiquing others' work.

Has anyone been picked up for publication by HC because of Authonomy? Yes. One person whose book I completely support. (HC claims two others came from the HC slush, but those two authors had agents who made the deals. Their participation on Authonomy was nearly nonexistent.)

Did any of those books come from the Editor's Desk? No. Only one book has even had a request for the full manuscript, and that was summarily rejected just like the rest.

So have HC's purposes in the site been met? That depends on what their intents really are. They said in the beginning it was to find new talent. If that is true, they have one success story from among the thousands of books that have been posted there, many of which I have read and, though many are still rough, have a lot of potential in them.

If HC's purposes are actually for publicity and monetizing of the slush, as has been argued by several Authonomites (with supporting evidence of ads now gracing the site and a self-publishing POD plan in the works), then I suppose they are achieving their goals. The only problem with that is that they are manipulating the authors who have, in trust, placed their work before the masses—and the editors at Harper Collins—without there having been a true intention of following through with their stated purpose.

What drove me from the site, though, was the sniping, arguing, and backstabbing that ran rampant in the effort to attain the hallowed Editor's Desk. I got tired of being called names and vilified by others for my sincerity.

Whenever you introduce competition, you bring out the best in some and the worst in others. Just this weekend, I heard from friends I've met on Authonomy and continue to associate with, that a certain writer posted his book two days previously and has risen to high rank of 17 because he asked his devout YouTube and video game followers to vote for his book. After 750 such backers, it is obvious that he will make the Editor's Desk. (For another perspective on this, visit Fake Plastic Souks.)

What is the value of all that support if it doesn't come with the blessing of the Authonomy community? Not much, if you are truly looking to improve your work by critiquing and receiving critiques on your work. But if his only intent is to put it before the editors at HC, he can be rejected as swiftly as the others before him.

Many claim that such antics break the system of Authonomy. But I wonder if HC doesn't revel in the publicity this garners for them. A captive audience of nearly 1,000 gamers at one time is what publishers' dreams are made of.

So it all rests with HC's true motives behind this venture. Yes, they have been lauded by the publishing and social networking communities for their enterprising venture. But the big question is whether the site has succeeded as a tool for finding writing talent. That would, sadly, be no. It is a great social gathering place, a writers' forum, and even a fun waste of time, but it is not, nor I doubt it will ever be, a successful way to acquire new books from talented writers.

Why? Because it is too focused on the competitive, on the social climbing and mutual back scratching that one finds whenever a game is being played without rules. People will make up their own rules, and then will be declaimed by others as cheating.

So to all the other publishers who might be considering such a venture, don't do it. One Authonomy is more than enough to show that it won't work to find new talent. And if you do want to set up your own marketing of self-publishing scheme, come clean and tell people the true intent from the beginning. It will save a lot of wasted time and effort for the writers involved.

The traditional route of finding an agent may be tough, and some talent may slip through the cracks, but it's better than the Dancing with the Survivor that is Authonomy.

Supremely spoiled

I feel spoiled to work for such an excellent book company and under such fine tutelage. Why, you may ask, is this being spoiled? Because I have such high standards for book quality that I find many other publishers disappoint by comparison.

I'm learning the ins of publishing, from the first conceptual stages of acquisitions through the editing and design process, all the way up to the marketing stages of a book. On any given book I work on, I have my hand in it all.

The up side? I know more about the whole process than many who work in large publishing houses because I have to know what happens and how to control it at every stage. The down side? It has made me spoiled for when I'll eventually have my own book published.

I know what great design is, and when I view books out in the marketplace, I'm often disappointed. You need a great story, of course, but before any reader picks up the book, they see the cover. If that cover is cheesy or kitschy, well, that can be a turnoff right from the start.

Working in publishing has helped me understand that you have to trust your publisher, editor, and designer implicitly if the book is to succeed, but being the do-it-myself type of girl that I am, I'll want to have my hand in the design pie as well.

It's a little too early to really be thinking of such things since I still don't even have an agent, but I can't help wondering what my book will look like. Matte finish with spot gloss on the cover image? Could be nice. Some embossing with a gloss overlay? Maybe cloth over board to give it a sophisticated feel. The possibilities (in my mind, at least) are endless.

But in the end, it will be up to the publisher. That means I'd better sign a contract with a good one*, now doesn't it.


*Note: The quality of publishers doesn't depend upon size. I work for a smaller house that produces excellent quality books. But that is probably a discussion for another day.

P.S. To answer the question you're probably asking: I write fiction, but I work for a nonfiction publisher. Hence, why I'm not going through them to publish my book.

When is it enough?

I've often heard writers ask, "When is my book done? When have I finished writing it?" I ask myself the same question. Frequently.

For the past few months I've focused on sending queries out to agents, and after initially good responses to my queries, I've since gotten rejections from some of those same agents. The standard line? "I didn't love it enough."

What is enough? I wonder. I love my book, which is why I wrote it. I even think it's close to being as done as I can get it—without outside editorial help, of course. But is it good enough?

I think it is. Really I do, but I also think I haven't found the right person yet who will love it and cherish it as much as I do. This may simply be the wrong time to be out shopping a young adult historical fiction. (Sorry, there are no vampires or zombies in this tale.)

What there is, though, is a story of heart and triumph over tragedy. Maybe now's not the time for it to make a big splash in the national publishing scene, but that doesn't mean I'm about to give up. I'll keep going, keep querying, keep seeking feedback on what I've written. And it may be that a small no-name publisher decides to take it on because they love it as much as I do. I'm realizing that will be more important than any six-figure advance because what I wrote will mean something to someone.

The moral of this tale? Don't give up. Even if you have to change your expectations, do whatever you need to do to achieve your dreams. It's worth it.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired

Well, I haven't blogged in awhile because I've been sick with a variety of things (flu, cough, eyelid surgery), plus I've been really tired because of that.

I really have nothing to say other than: I'm not dead, and I plan to blog more when I do have something to say.

Other than that, have a great week.