New Holding Page!

Still not a website, but today my new holding page went live. 

Thanks to Maddee at Xuni.com for bringing a little piece of me to life on line!

Check it out here.

I love it!  The website itself won't be ready for a few months, but for now I really love this page.

Killing a Darling

I've just started the first round of edited revision on SPIES.  As much a I can't wait to be on the other side of this revision with a finished manuscript in hand, revision is my favorite part of the writing process.  The first draft hurts because it's both overwhelming and unknown.  But revision, revision is where a manuscript becomes a book, where characters become real, where plots have a purpose and where stories come to life.

I love discovering the hidden depths of my characters and the deeper meaning behind my stories.  I love exploring themes and plot threads in more detail.  I love adding layers that make the story richer and more complex.

Bur Revision is hard too.  Not every scene, or plot thread, or character serves the story.  And it can be hard to let them go.

One of my favorite characters got cut today.  It was my idea to cut him, because the overall story loses nothing from his absence.  He was a literal darling, brightening every scene he was in with a touch of humor. He didn't serve any purpose that wasn't being fulfilled by another character though and I needed to simplify.

I've cut characters from manuscripts before.  Body counts are nothing new for my revision process.  But this one hurt more than the others because I loved him so much. 

So tonight I raise a glass to Jason Hiles, thank him for the laughs and friendship, and send him into literary limbo.  For now.  He'll be back.   

And I promise him one hell of a storyline.

UPDATE or WHERE HAVE I BEEN?

So it seems as if I've fallen off the face of the earth right?  Nope, I'm still here.  And I've been very, very busy over the last few months.

Turns out that when you sell a book off of a partial manuscript, you actually have to deliver a finished product.  Who knew?  So I spent three months from September to December writing.  Then writing some more.  Then revising.  Until a finished manuscript of SPIES & PREJUDICE was born.  It was a lot of fun to write, and I'm about to start the editing process.

And I've been blogging as a regular member of the YA Muses blog.  I blog weekly usually on Wednesdays.  You can find me over at http://www.yamuses.blogspot.com.  The Muses is a blog featuring my entire critique group.  We've learned so much in the last year as we've moved closer to becoming published writers, and the blog is place to share our experiences, writing processes, books we love and more.  Plus, my critique partners are some of the most amazing writers I've had the privilege to read. 

Finally, I've been working on a new project, a new manuscript that for now is just for me.  It's fun to write without any deadlines or expectations. 

Writing a book under contract was wonderful and terrifying.  It's a great feeling to know your writing will be published, but it also brings a lot of pressure that you don't have when you're writing on your own.  In order to keep from becoming completely paralyzed and get a draft of SPIES on paper, I had to shut all of that out and just write the book for me.  It wasn't easy though, and I'm still not sure how I managed to do it.  I imagine published authors experience this to an even greater degree, because they not only have a publisher, but a legion of fans who they don't want to let down.  Talk about pressure.

As stress goes, this is definitely the good kind, because you know how lucky you are to have people who are looking forward to your next book.  And having a deadline really motivated me to sit down and write, as opposed to meandering my way to a first draft like I did in the past.  I proved something to myself.

I am really doing this.

I am a writer.

The Craziness of Publishing

So, if you follow me on YA Muses, Twitter or the Blueboard, you might have heard that I got my first book deal, and my second, all in the same day.  How did this happen?  I'm still trying to figure it out, but near as I can tell social networking and conferences had a lot to do with it.  And while a personal connection won't sell a book by itself, it can open the door to unexpected opportunities.

Circa April 2010:  I had just signed with Sarah Davies with my very first novel, a Celtic YA paranormal called BANDIA, involving forbidden love and hot guys with no shirts.  We were discussing a pretty major rewrite when I attended my local SCWBI conference in Rocklin, CA.  Unbeknownst to even Sarah, I had started a second novel while I was querying BANDIA, the book that would become SPIES & PREJUDICE, a Veronica Mars style retelling of Pride & Prejudice.  I submitted the first fifteen pages of SPIES for a conference critique, and through luck of the draw, I drew Flux editor Brian Farrey.  Brian approached me at a break and when I wasn't hyperventilating, I think I heard him say that he really liked my writing voice and would love to see the whole manuscript for SPIES.  I told him the book wasn't finished, but that I had a paranormal I was revising with Sarah.  Brian and Sarah talked, and we made sure he was on the submission list for BANDIA.

Fast forward to May 2010:  I was fumbling around on Twitter when I found editor Elizabeth Law (@egmontgal) on an #askagent thread.  I started following her and happened to catch a tweet about an off-Broadway show called Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson that she enjoyed.  Oddly, my husband and I had once joked about writing a musical about James K. Polk and had even written a few bars of a song about Manifest Destiny, so I sent a reply to Ms. Law asking about the AJ show.  She replied with the details, and my husband and I got tickets to see it a few weeks later when we were in NYC.  When I got back to CA, I let Elizabeth know that we'd seen it and really enjoyed it.  We exchanged some Tweets over the summer as I rewrote BANDIA, and I continued to follow Elizabeth, learning that we liked a lot of the same books and that she really seemed to care about YA and MG books. 

August/September 2010:  BANDIA, all revised and on submission for just over a week, got an amazing offer from Brian Farrey.  A multiple book offer, with options for even more books featuring the characters from BANDIA.  I was over the moon.  I'd met Brian and heard him speak.  I knew Flux would be a good home for my books, and that it wouldn't flinch at some of the edgier aspects of BANDIA.  And one of my favorite YA authors is Simone Elkeles, whose LEAVING PARADISE is with Flux.  (Congrats to Simone for hitting the NYT list last week with the sequel, RETURN TO PARADISE).

But we still hadn't heard form Egmont.  And I was torn. Because I really wanted to work with Elizabeth too.  So when Elizabeth called Sarah to talk about BANDIA, somehow it came up that she wanted to see my other projects.  SPIES had been put on the back burner while I revised BANDIA, but I sent over the partial manuscript.  Two hours later, I was on the phone with Elizabeth, who was even more delightful in person.  We had an offer on SPIES that same afternoon.

But could I really do both deals?

Sarah immediately started talking timelines and delivery dates, and it soon became clear that the timing would work out so that, yes, it was definitely doable.

And so I get the best of all worlds.  I get to work with the two editors that I connected with on my own, in completely unrelated ways.  I have no doubt that these personal contacts went a long way to getting Flux to read and offer on BANDIA so quickly, and Egmont to dig a little deeper to discover SPIES.  But none of it would have happened if I didn't have a wonderful editorial agent like Sarah, who helped me turn BANDIA into something marketable and went above and beyond to get me my first deal and my second. On the same day!

If you haven't seen them, here are the announcements from Publishers Marketplace:

Talia Vance's debut SPIES AND PREJUDICE, pitched as Veronica Mars meets PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, in which a teenage private investigator goes undercover to discover that the mother she thought was dead is actually in the witness protection program, and the guy she was determined to hate is the one person who can save her life, forcing her to re-evaluate everything she thought she knew about herself, her family, and love, to Elizabeth Law at Egmont, for publication in Spring 2012, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

And:

Talia Vance's BANDIA, rooted in Celtic mythology, a story of forbidden love, as a girl discovers too late that she's descended from a deadly Irish goddess, having accidentally bound her soul to the hot guy whose tribe is sworn to destroy her; falling for the one boy it would kill her to love, and with her survival depending on his death, she must find a way to break the power of her dark inheritance, to Brian Farrey at Flux, in a two-book deal, for publication in Fall 2012 and Fall 2013, by Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency (NA).

And now I need to stop bouncing off the walls and get to work.  I have deadlines :) 

 


 

My Manuscript has a Body Count

My manuscript is bloody.  It's been hacked and cut and beaten.  It's had its guts pulled out and put back in.   And it's been retitled.  And retitled again.  My manuscript has a body count.

The fist casualty- subplots.  Some of these subplots were funny, others had shocking twists.  A select few even had some achingly beautiful prose.  But don't feel sorry for them either.  They were guilty as sin.  They distracted from the main character arcs, complicated the plot unnecessarily, stopped moving the story forward, or *gasp* were a little too convenient. In short, they had it coming.

The second casualty- characters.  Some lovely characters with invariably witty dialog and secret agendas.  The gay son of a macho warrior who gets off on disappointing his father and has a wicked sense of fashion?  Sadly, gone.  The little girl with magical healing powers that are never explained but critical to the climax of the story?  Axed.  Not that anyone really misses her.

The third casualty- werewolves.  What??  But this was a WEREWOLF book.  Surely the werewolves had to stay.  Nope.  The werewolves were guilty too. Turns out that the werewolves were weighing down the story with my own preconceived notions and baggage associated with the wolf mythology.  Getting rid of the wolves freed me up to reimagine the story and focus on the characters.  And as a bonus, no bestiality undertones!

The fourth casualty-almost the entire second half.  Forty thousand words. Some of them really good words, but words that didn't serve the main characters or conflict. Some great scenes died here.  And I can't lie. It was bloody. 

The fifth casualty- fear.  You'd think with all this cutting and shredding, that there would be no getting rid of the fear.  And at first, there was a lot-seriously, a lot- of fear.  Fear of cutting out some of the best parts of the book.  Fear that I couldn't write anything better or even as good.  That fear was killed off the old-fashioned way.  Not by slashing (even though I wished I could), but by creating.  Writing.  Who new that writing could be such a powerful weapon?

So don't worry about my manuscript and it's body count.  It's fully recovered.

And then some.

In which my manuscript becomes the Bachelorette

I have been submitting my paranormal YA for a few months now. There have been many hopeful meetings with producers (queries) that led to a few callbacks (requests for partials) and even a few dates with the Bachelor (agents who read the full). There was even one meet the parents that was so close, but alas, the Bachelor did not choose me.

And then something strange happened. All of a sudden I had not one, but two agents requesting revisions and offering to look again. Then an offer from one. Then an offer from a third agent. Everything seemed crazy and possible, and for a week I could barely think straight. My manuscript, like Tristan, got to be the Bachelorette.

So yes, you really can find a match on a reality TV show, I mean, through the querying process. I am pleased to announce that I am now represented by the wonderful Sarah Davies at the Greenhouse Literary Agency! http://www.greenhouseliterary.com

For those who are querying take heart. I did not know Sarah. I didn't know anyone who knew Sarah. I did not attend a conference where Sarah was speaking. Nope. I did things the old fashioned way. I sent a blind query + 5 pages, following the submission guidelines on her website.

Before querying, I did read her blog and several interviews with her available online. I spent some time on writer forums to get a feel for the buzz about her, and I felt confident that she would be a good fit for my work. I continued to do research even after sending my query, only to see a comment from another writer that Sarah had recently said she was seeing way too many werewolf/shapeshifter books. My heart sank. Yes, I had sent her a werewolf/shapeshifter book. So I wrote that query off.

Then, I got an email in my box from Sarah's co-agent in the UK, Julia Churchill. Julia said she was reading Sarah's mail while Sarah was at a conference, and that she liked the pages. So I sent them out, thinking I was lucky that someone else was reading the mail, but that Sarah would probably reject me pretty quickly.

Not so. Turns out, Sarah had read my query originally, but was on the fence about it because of the subject matter. She liked the sample pages enough to send it to Julia for a second opinion. So I was lucky that Julia liked the pages too.

Sarah went out on a limb to offer representation, even though we agreed that the manuscript would have to undergo a pretty significant revision before it could be submitted to publishers. Sarah's experience as an editor (she has worked with Phillip Pullman and Meg Cabot!) gave me complete confidence in her judgment. I agreed with her comments, and feel like the revisions are going to take this book to a level far beyond my original vision.

Finding an agent who believes in you is a major milestone for any writer. Finding someone who believes in you AND is willing to put the time in to make your work sing. That's priceless.

So, I am of course thrilled, excited and bouncing off the walls.

But enough gushing.

I have work to do. My poor characters have no idea what's coming...

The dog ate my homework

Huckleberry is a great puppy, but he can be a little needy. If left alone for more than an hour or two, he has been known to get bored and be a bit distructive.

The good news is he doesn't dig up the carpet or tear down the walls, although at 150 pounds he certainly could. Shoes? Nope. They're perfectly safe. Rawhide bones? Nary a tooth mark.

It seems Huckleberry has a taste for literature.

The hardcovers are the most popular, as he can really sink his teeth into a strong binding. There's the added bonus of a removable cover which can be easily shredded into a thousand tiny pieces. It's really quite pretty. When not scattered about your lawn. The paperbacks are fun, but pose no challenge. Easily digestible pulp fiction appears to be a favorite.

The books are usually still legible, if you can pry the battered pages apart. Who knew Saint Bernard drool dried to the consistency of Elmer's glue?

I am almost afraid to contact the dog behaviorist. The first question will be,"Um, why do you keep 47 books on your nightstand?"

And then, "Aren't these for teenagers?"

Followed by, "Are they ALL about vampires?"

So for now Huckleberry's book stash is safe.