If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Well, this blog post certainly took longer than I wanted to write it. But this is what happens when you keep putting things off “until later”. The “until laters” will get you and then you’ll find yourself months afterward thinking “What the hell just happened?”.

Putting aside my lapse in posts, I wanted to talk about the Alumni Retreat. I had a great time with friends as well as meeting new ones there. Probably the most surprising thing for me was finding out the retreat had people attending that weren’t alumni from Seton Hill’s WPF program. This little tidbit begs the question why was it called an alumni retreat if not everyone was from the program? I think I’ll bring it up during the planning sessions for next year’s retreat.

One of my goals of going up to the retreat was to meet the agents there. And as mentioned in previous posts, I hadn’t met an agent in the flesh yet so for me this was a novel experience.

The first pitch session I had was with Bob Mecoy of Creative Book Services. What was interesting was I wasn’t planning on pitching to him, but at the last minute I decided to pitch the graphic novel Calling Home to see what his reaction was. Overall it was a great session, buoyed by a longer discussion I had with him during lunch where I learned he was very interested writers who could finish a story to work with artists. After speaking with him, I determined going the self-pubbed route with Calling Home would be best since it’s already being serialized on the Internet and that it was better to use it as an exposure tool. It was an enlightening session for me.

The second was with Diana Fox of the Fox Literary Agency. This one felt a little more rocky. Well at least to me. Diana was very nice, but I was unprepared for the questions she asked about my work. The worst part of it was I felt like I had been caught unawares. I couldn’t articulate thoughts about my own novel! I was channeling my inner ten year old when an adult asked something and you didn’t know the answer because you were paying attention to the interesting knot in the wood floor instead of what they’d been saying. Even more icing on the embarrassment cake was when she suggested there might be some negative connotations to some of the ideas I had for the other books in the series. On a side note, it was great she knew something about the mythology of the city I was using in the novel since not many people knew about the Breton/Christian mythology of the City of Ys. I was sure I’d blown the pitch but she did want to see my pages so that was great news. I’m also grateful I didn’t sound like a moron, so at the end of the day I was happy with the results.

All in all, the experiences and face time I had with the agents and interaction with the other WPF’s definitely made the trip for me and I look forward to next year’s jaunt to Greensburg and would recommend it to any other writer who’s looking for a great, small conference that won’t break the bank.

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.

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?

I know it’s been a little short of updates here, but that was because I just finished my manuscript on October 5th. It was a big milestone for me and something that I’ve been working on for the better part of a couple of years now lays atop my desk complete.

It’s been sent off to the readers and now I have to move on to the next part of my graduation task list: The Genre Essay.

Now, those of you who know me can attest to how much I loath essays. Most of the time I view them as busy work set upon my by a professor who has nothing better to do than make me waste my time. This time though I think it’ll be different. After all, it’s an essay on something academic in genre I love so much: science-fiction. Maybe it will be interesting instead of mind-numbingly boring I don’t know. But, it’ll be interesting to find out.

Also on the plate is looking for a literary agent. I’ve polished off my synopsis and now I need to craft the dreaded query letter. That damned letter is like writer’s kryptonite. I find it hilarious that most of us have no problems putting out a multi-book opus which has the potential to sell millions of copies, but then we’re afraid of writing a little letter that might top out at two hundred words. That will be what I’ll be focusing my efforts on after having scoured the Writer’s Market Agent’s guide earlier in the week.

If any other science-fiction writers out there have an agent they love and is looking for authors, please contact me because I’m definitely looking for that right agent to grow with.

I just came back from Residency at Seton Hill University today. It was nice to have an uneventful flight after the interesting week I had.

First off, I apologize for the lack of updates while I was there. About a couple of days in, I began to feel under the weather, which culminated in a visit to the urgent care on Saturday morning. It took only a couple of seconds for the test to come back positive for strep throat, but thankfully I was prescribed some meds and now I’m feeling better. My main problem now is my wife insists on asking me who I was kissing to catch it.

The Residency was enjoyable as ever, and meeting all of my friends always gives me a rush. Being surrounded by so many writers can in inspire in ways you can’t expect. Since there were a lot of things that happened, I’ll spread out some of the more significant events and lessons I learned through some of my blog entries over this week.

Lastly, while I was sitting in bed for most of Saturday there was one thing that kept popping into my mind: Was there any way I could do some work during the time? I found I lacked the energy to leave the room for the most part, but I’m curious if any of you have some tips and tricks for keeping productive while being dogged by the bug d’jour? Feel free to post some of your ideas in the comments.