Reading, writing and the search for the perfect cup of coffee.

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Well the Alumni retreat is fast approaching and I’m looking forward to meeting with all my friends and faculty at Seton Hill. But even more important, I’ll have an opportunity to pitch my novel to some of the agents who will be at the retreat. There’s one problem.

I’ve never done a pitch in person.

Now, I’ve spoken about my book to many people, and also have written a query letter about it, but this will be the first time I go to a conference and pitch this thing in front of an agent. I’m very nervous about this and I’ve read quite a bit about making the perfect elevator pitch, but I’m still not sure if I’ve got a good one.

I’d like to throw out my pitch here and would appreciate any feedback on it. Does it work? What needs to be tweaked? Any suggestions are welcome. Here it is:

What if you forgot you lived a different life? And what if someone is trying to kill you because of it? In this science-fantasy, Maria, an amnesic combat cyborg turned farmer’s wife, has to find out more of who she was before she’s hunted down. What she finds out leads to a revelation which will end everything she knows and loves.

There are times as a writer you have to deal with negative feedback, but usually in a critique circle you also get positive feedback. You’ll find out what’s good and bad all in the same sitting. This sort of critique is what helps writers grow. Without it, we’ll keep making the same mistakes over, and over again.

But then there are times when you get feedback like this: “Your story/book sucks”.

Nice, huh?

This sort of negative feedback is not helpful and in many cases for some writers can cause severe damage to their writing career if they’re not thick skinned enough. They feel like they’re being attacked on a personal level and they let the harsh words poison their soul to the point where they’re petrified to even pick up the pen/sit in front of the keyboard.

So the question is, how do you deal with this sort of destructive feedback?

There are several approaches I like to take:

1. Ask why they feel this way: Just as someone has every right to say negative things about your work, you have every right to ask them why they feel this way. Hold them to their words and demand specific reasons so you can improve your work. If they’re tight-lipped or refuse to elaborate then…
2. Hold their negative feedback up to public scrutiny: If someone gives you negative feedback, especially in a public forum, and then doesn’t want to say more about it, you should call them out it. Ask them if they’re more interested in attacking the work or the author than providing real feedback to improve the it. Usually, this will get the person giving a negative review to either provide their reasons to why they feel that way about your work or cause them to attack you personally. If the latter is the case then…
3. Ignore it: Sometimes there are people who like to post and say negative things just to spark argument and ill feelings. On the internet, they call this sort of person a Troll and when you identify a Troll either on the internet or in real life the best thing you can do is ignore them. Just file away their feedback as bogus and useless and continue what you were doing without even paying any attention to it. It never happened, so there’s no need to worry about it.

The last approach can be difficult, but as a writer it’s an essential skill you need to develop to survive. You won’t make everyone happy with your writing, and there will be those who think you write so badly they’d recommend you break all of your fingers and gouge your eyes out so you never will be able to torture the world with your foul verse. Once you accept it, you can shrug off any negative feedback and ad hominem attacks and continue to do what you love best: writing.

Once more, I reach out to the crowd for thoughts on my latest question: Returning to the Florida Writer’s Association.

A long time ago, I had joined the Florida Writer’s Association in search of others who shared my passion for writing.  I wanted to find kindred spirits who understand the driving force of wanting to put down words to describe the thoughts, ideas, and visions dancing within my mind.  I hoped I could then find some within who wrote in similar genres as I and that maybe we could become a critique group and support each other as we all strived for own goals.  I even took part in the first such conference they had organized.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find what I was looking for.  The meetings didn’t hold my interest and there were very, very few who wrote in my genres and seemingly even fewer who were interested in working in a critique group.  And I was too early in my writing career to relate to some of the topics in the conference.  While I had some great social opportunities, it didn’t work out as I had hoped. In fact, I remember when I went up to chat with the keynote speaker, he took the time to point out I was overweight and that it would affect my writing (Like I really didn’t notice I was sporting some extra pounds. I’m glad you pointed it out for me!).

That was about eight to nine years ago.  I recently stumbled across the Annual Florida Writer’s Conference website and was thinking about going back to see what was happening.  I’m still looking for some social opportunities with other writers and have found them to be lacking here in Orlando.  But, then some of the last experiences I had kept coming to mind.  Would I just be throwing my time away? Or should I shelve my experiences and go back to the meetings to see if maybe there are others around who also write in my genre and give the organization a chance once more?  What do you think?

I know I should have written this blog post a while ago, but I’m happy to announce the graphic novel version of Calling Home. You can find it here.

This project came about after the initial run of Calling Home. Someone had commented to me that this could be easily converted into a comic because of the way it was written. When I looked at it, I noticed that they were right. After that I started the search to find someone who I could work with to help me bring the visual version of the story to life.

Through some great friends on Plurk (Hi there, CHiC!) I was introduced to Leila Del Duca and I knew I had found the right person to help me visualize this project. We started the ground work in January/February with an expected launch date in March. It ended up being toward April, but the extra time was well worth it.

Well enough about the genesis of the idea, go ahead and take a look at the comic. Also, is a review of Calling Home and an interview with Leila and myself.

After seeing the success of QueryDay on Twitter and some of the great suggestions that came from it, I’ve decided to post a query letter I’ve written for my novel, Memories of Ys: Angel Down. Please read over it and tell me what you think about it in the comments section. I’m looking for any constructive feedback so feel free to say anything you’d like (short of a personal attacks, of course, but don’t hold back on on really useful thoughts). I have put some generic information in the greeting to make it easier to post and review.

In appreciation of your help, whoever posts the most useful critique of my query letter will get a $20 Amazon gift certificate. Contest will run until Friday, May 22, 2009. I will e-mail the winner, so please be sure to leave your e-mail address with your comment.

Thanks!

Dear Agent,

I am writing to you because you represented TITLE by AUTHOR, and I feel my book is in the same vein.

My story, a 93,800 word science-fantasy novel titled MEMORIES OF YS – ANGEL DOWN, follows an amnesic combat cyborg who is yanked from her life as a farmer and into a conspiracy to keep a millennia-old secret from being revealed, while trying everything she can do to protect the ones she loves from harm. The resurrection of her memories will end the civilization which created her.

I have attended and will be graduating with my Master’s degree from Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction program in January. While having lived in Florida for most of my life, I’ve traveled and lived in a variety of different places, including the site of where the city of Ys once stood off the coast of Brittany.

I am publishing a graphic novel version of my social fiction story CALLING HOME. It was a dialog only science fiction story written entirely within the social networking sites Twitter and Plurk. It can be found at http://callinghome.us

My entire manuscript is ready to be sent at your request. I look forward to hearing from you.

Ask anyone who knows me and they’ll tell you how much I love coffee. The sentence after that they’ll mention how much I love my Keurig brewer. It is the best of the single serve coffee brewers out there. But it does have one problem with it’s Kcups: Once you use them, there’s no way for you to use them again. It’s the ultimate in convenience but not the most environmentally sound think to do.

Now Keurig does have an answer to using your own coffee in their brewers and have a reusable system that minimizes waste: The My Kcup.

The My Kcup is a great system, but it’ll cost you about $15 for a single one. If you want to have some more, the costs can add right up. And to top it off, the My Kcup’s plastics aren’t exactly the best around (drop one on the floor and you’ll see what I mean). So again, where does that leave anyone who doesn’t want to send more plastic to a landfill and would rather drink their own personal blends?

The My-Kap is an interesting middle step on the scale between the a regular Kcup and the My Kcup. Put simply, to use the cap, all you need to do is to rinse out the used coffee or tea out of a regular Kcup after you’ve peeled back the foil top. Then after refilling the used Kcup with new coffee or tea, you insert the My-Kap and the put it back in the brewer. That’s it, you’ve effectively re-used a single use Kcup.

You can get more than 10 uses out of the Kcup (I found it starts to break apart not to long after that), but that’s still pretty good compared to throwing the used Kcup out. Even better is the My-Kap plastics are a lot more durable that the My Kcup, easily handling multiple trips to the floor while I was trying to remove it from a Kcup using the included extraction tool.

Now, the My-Kap does have its shortcomings. The first is that when you’re initially setting it into the used Kcup, it tends to fit very snugly so you’ll be spending some time rocking it into place. The second is that hot liquid will pool around the top of the My-Kap and will spill when you open the brewing chamber. Fortunately this isn’t too much of a problem since the spilled coffee will collect and drain out toward your coffee cup. Either way, these two nitpicks aren’t enough to have me stop using the My-Kap.

Overall, the My-Kap is a great system for people who don’t already have My Kcups to use their own favorite coffees and have less of an environmental impact from using a Keurig brewer.

Today, I finally got around to grinding and brewing some Jamaican Blue Mountain Coffee my wife and I had picked up during our honeymoon cruise while we were in Jamaica.

I have to tell you, I’m not really impressed.

Before I go into my impressions, I’ll mention the brand of coffee I picked up. We picked up a bag of JABLUM Coffee after having a really good experience with trying a bottle of their ice coffee.

It was very tasty, and while not the strongest roast I’ve had, it was pleasant. To ensure I have a great cup of coffee, I always buy my coffee as whole bean and grind it with a burr grinder before I brew it.

The JABLUM whole bean coffee I ground up and then brewed was weak, with a very low acidity and without any sort of overtones at all. I was rather shocked to say the least. This couldn’t be the same coffee I’d had before, is it?I ended up tossing the batch after a couple more test cups.

So my question to all of you out in coffee land is: What is the big deal with Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee? I just don’t see it. Now it could be I got a bad batch but for the price I paid, it should have been great. Maybe the brand I picked up is known for producing a low quality roast?

Either way, I have too many questions to try more without some guidance. If you’ve had a great cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee and can recommend a roaster, by all means please e-mail me or post in the comments.

When the year began and I was tangled up in finishing my MA, I had thought to myself: “I’ll post to my blog later on. Maybe take a week off.”

So then here I find myself in April and I haven’t so much as posted a word here. If anything this should be an object lesson in posting consistently. That and not dedicating all my time to Twitter.

Then again, that is the lure of microblogging services, isn’t it? Very low commitment, quick posting time, and a seemingly endless pool of forgiveness for errors. It’s no wonder a lot of bloggers find it easy to post consistently to social networks like Twitter, Plurk, FriendFeed, etc. Some have even wondered if the end of the blog itself is nigh?

I personally don’t think so, and I for one will re-commit to my blog and make sure I’ll be one of the bloggers out actually blogging.

Ask any writer what they think about rejections and you’ll get a myriad of responses, but they all share a common thread: “We don’t like them, but they’re a part of being a writer.” And wherever there are opinions about rejections there are numerous ways of dealing with them ranging from some more sensitive souls breaking down in tears to others reacting in more aggressive or creative ways.

I, on the other hand, like to view rejections as a goal.

While working with a mentor of mine in the Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill, he told me that while you can’t make a goal out of how many acceptances you get in a year, you can make a goal of how many rejections you get. Ultimately, you can control how many submissions you sent out and therefore how many rejections you get since most agent and publisher rejection rates are usually at least 95%. By treating rejections like this, I make it into a game. It also motivates me to keep submitting in the face of rejection.

For this year, I made a goal of getting at least 10 rejections, so far I have 8. I’m hoping that the last two will come in before the end of the year, but it’s getting close to the holidays so I may not make it.

What is your rejection goal? Do you have another way you deal with rejections?

After taking some time to make sure the query letter was perfect (as well as taking a small break from it all) I’ve sent off the first query to the first agent on my grand list of agents to query.  I have 29 identified that I feel would be interested in my work and have what is needed to get it sold. Over the next week I’ll be sending more queries out and then the worst part of this all starts: The Waiting Game.

The most insidious part of The Waiting Game is that there isn’t just one waiting game. There are at least THREE!  For example, the first one comes when you send off your initial query and then wait for a response.  The second when the agent responds to you requesting the first 3 chapters of your work and/or a synopsis.  The third is when the agent requests your entire manuscript for review.

And the particularly joyous thought is that your manuscript can be rejected at ANY of those previously mentioned stages!  It almost wants to make you start drinking, doesn’t?

I think I’ll go have a coffee now.