A Lovely Rejection

Just after Christmas I sent Jimmy and Cinder off to Orca Press in BC to see if they were interested. Last week I received an email from the acquisitions editor saying she had enjoyed the book, especially the "delightful" Cinder. Unfortunately they didn't feel it fit with what they were looking for at the moment but she encouraged me to send it to other publishers as it may fit their current needs.

I forwarded the email to a freelance editor from Halifax who helps me and she called it a  "lovely rejection", It certainly was more pleasing than the previous publisher I sent it to, who had actually asked for it, and I have never heard back from them again. I guess the fact that this editor actually sent me something personal is a very good sign that I'm on the right track.

Speaking of which, it just never hurts to speak to people in a book store. I was at Cover to Cover books in Riverview (my favorite store) a few weeks ago and there was an author doing a book signing. So I chatted with him for a bit, bought his book, and then had a nice discussion about writing with him, I mentioned I was trying to find a publisher for Jimmy and Cinder and he asked if I had tried a publisher here in Riverview. I told him I hadn't realized there was one. He gave me the name, I looked it up on-line and there it was: Chocolate River Publishing.  I checked out their website and saw that they were fairly new, had four or five books under contract but none were even close to the fantasy genre I was writing in.

Rather than send a full query, I sent a short email saying what type a book I had and if they would be interested in seeing it. If so, I would send a proper query according to their guidelines. About two hours later, I get an email back from the publisher saying she was familiar with my previous two books and to send her the manuscript right away. Actually she told me to drop it off to her house.as I actually know her. My younger son, Fraser, was in her son's wedding party! Here, I didn't know this lady was a publisher! All this from speaking with another writer at a book store.

So I have dropped Jimmy and Cinder off to her and we will see what happens. If she isn't interested, I think I'll change tactics and look for an agent instead.

Vacation so close I can smell it!

Tomorrow evening, around 5 pm, AST, my wife and I will start a week of holidays. We were unable to follow our customary practice of taking a week off in late April or early May. This was due, in part, to all of our children being in Europe while we, poor deprived parents that we are, looked after a couple of grand-cats. So we are ready for a little R&R at the cottage.

Please understand my vacations are a bit odd in that I take lots of work to do with me. This includes my current manuscript, my portable "office" which contains all things real estate plus the cemetery stuff. Oddly enough, our extended family owns a cemetery and I, the one with the flexible work schedule, have the pleasure of managing it for little pay.

So it is a working vacation, but working while sitting in the shade with a cold drink, beats the hell out of the office any day.

Maybe I'll get "Jimmy and Cinder" finished and ready to send out.

"Jimmy and Cinder" and figuring out how dragons and trolls speak

My next middle grade story is titled "Jimmy and Cinder". The main characters are Jimmy, a 13 year old human prince, and Cinder, a dragon prince of similar age, who meet one day in the forest. Cinder is lost and Jimmy agrees to set him on the correct path home. Both have similar backgrounds, both are Crown Princes, both are skipping school when they meet. However, their fathers are life long enemies. Over the course of the story, Jimmy and Cinder find out that their knowledge of the other's race is full of misunderstandings, and things are not as they were led to believe. Their new friendship helps them work together to get out of a bad spot involving Mountain Trolls and ultimately brings their families together as well. Big "Disney" finish.

The freelance editor I'm working with, a person who is really making me push the envelope, wants me to be very distinctive using dragon language and troll language.  I've decided that dragons will speak a form of old English. However, that isn't easy as I thought. I've been learning a lot about "thee", "thy" and "thou". Thank God for the source of all information - Google.

I've been putting the Trolls farther down the intelligence scale, which may be unfair to trolls, but that's just the way it turned out. I have them speaking a broken, more basic English, hoping it is different enough from dragon language that young readers don't become confused. This is my first attempts to introduce dialects into a story and it has been a challenge for me. I think the different ways of using the languages makes the story stronger, but I don't want younger readers to get discouraged or have a struggle understanding the story.

I'll keep you posted and next time I'll see if I can post the first chapter.

Trying to Get Back in the Groove

So I guess it's time to get started on this blog again.  Posting once every two or three years just doesn't cut it.  Time has been a bit scare this past year as last March I started a 2 year term as President of the NB Real Estate Association and now I have to travel a lot more.  Any spare writing time I can scrape up either goes into a book or my real estate blog.  This poor little orphan has been sadly neglected.  That has got to change.

In the past year my writing career has had a boost by having my second book, "Emily Finds a Dragon", put on the short list for the Hackmatack Children's Award.  It was one of 10 English middle grade books selected to be read this year by selected students in grades 3-6.  They then vote for a favorite.  The award will be handed out in May of this year.  I was very excited to have my second book nominated and winning would be very amazing.

I have finished "Jimmy and Cinder" as far as I can take it.  Any more work will be the result of directions from either an agent or an editor.  I'm now working on the first draft of the next one.  This will be a bit older audience again and should finish out in the 50,000 word range, maybe as much as 60,000.  I see this one being for grade 5 to 6 range.  I try to get 3000 words a week done but it doesn't always happen.

I have been doing more Writer in the School visits with Jennifer, my illustrator/editor/publisher.  She does a lot of them.  Being an illustrator and an author makes her very good at keeping the smaller kids amused.  I'm learning more about it and hopefully can do some on my own eventually.  I keep getting ideas from Jennifer, and I occasionally think of something myself!

One message we try to impress upon the elementary school students is that the ability to write clear, concise sentences is a necessary skill even if you have no intention of being a writer for a living.  As we embrace more electronic communication, we are actually writing more and not less.  Clarity is necessity since it's hard to convey emotion in an email or text.  I even see it on the real estate side of my life as more and more REALTORS use email and text to set up appointments.  We rarely speak on the phone anymore.  Sort of sad, but that is the way society is going.

I guess that's why writing will never go out of style.  Just the format will change.