If you want my take on the query-comment battle, see my comment on Natalie’s post but in summary: unless it’s intentionally being mean, I don’t mind when agents comment on queries in sometimes humorous ways. Also? Writers complain ALL THE TIME about wanting personal feedback. You might not like the way you get it, but you are getting it, in a way. So…

This query is for a project I’d like to revise and requery. This letter was sent to about three dozen agents. I had four requests  from it, but we can all see why that number wasn’t any higher.

Dear [Agent],

When Sela is chosen to be an acolyte for the faery choir, the intercessors between humans and the watcher god, her life as a temple orphan morphs into one of worship, magic, and more unusual, distressing visions. The king has been waiting for such an opportunity so he can seize control of the choir. To make Sela his pawn, he concocts a scheme that declares her the queen’s daughter, long thought dead in a fire. Now she must divide her time between the choir and the court, caught in two worlds when she feels she belongs to neither. Will she uncover the truth of the king’s machinations before she delivers the choir into his hands, or will trying to be someone she’s not prove too much for Sela?

My young adult fantasy, The Faery Choir, is complete at 70,000 words.

I hold a B.A. in creative writing from Eastern University, who honored me with an award for most potential upon graduation. I have a short story under contract with Drollerie Press for publication later this year.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

—

Yes, that’s the whole thing, with a bit of personalization to open. I cringe hardest at the bio.

I shouldn’t have liked this book.

Vampires? Check.

Werewolves? Check.

Fairies? Check.

Secret agency? Check.

Fairy prophecy? Check.

(All from the back of the book, no spoilers!)

So what made PARANORMALCY so different? The execution. Goodness. It is FUNNY.

Exhibit A: Tasey, the sparkly, hot pink Taser Evie carries as a weapon against the abovementioned vamps, weres, and fey.

Exhibit B: Oh bleep. The language is clean because Evie bleeps out her own curse words. It’s adorable and funny and my online friends may be adopting it. (And there’s a GREAT reason why, too, it’s not just a tic.)

Exhibit C: Evie herself. She really is a normal girl. She loves pink and teen television soap operas a la 90210. She has every reason to be angsty and melodramatic - but she isn’t. Yet she’s a very real character, she doesn’t take the plot developments lightly, she questions herself, her world - she just doesn’t languish in it. (So. Refreshing.)

Exhibit D: Lend. Lend is the Love Interest and he’s adorable. No possibly-going-to-abuse-you bad-boy here. No I-have-personal-demons loner here. He’s so normal. Not super mature and gallant, not whiny or angsty or disturbed, either.

My biggest - okay, really my only - problem with this book is the marketing. I don’t know if it’s the same on the book itself as it is on the ARC. There’s a cover quote from Aprilynne Pike, the book ’seduced me.’ and she says on the back, of how one love interest got Evie and the other one got her….  this is so misleading.

There is no dark love triangle. The character Pike refers to, Reth, is SORT OF Evie’s ex boyfriend (though Evie herself says they never dated), a fairy, and he calls her my love and is your semitypical bad-boy style dangerous but attractive psycho. But I think the book makes it very clear he is NOT a love interest option.

Also, the tone isn’t dark and seductive. It’s light. It’s funny. It deals with dark stuff, sure, but that’s not the tone. So I found both quotes of Pike’s to be not good advert. Just me, maybe.

I think I would say, if you love Twilight read this book, but if you don’t love Twilight, especially, you should read this book.

I received SHADES from Mary’s agent, Jennifer Jackson, in a Twitter contest. (If you read my reviews, you’ll see this happens a lot.)

SHADES is ‘the fantasy novel you’ve always wished Jane Austen had written,’ according to the back copy on the ARC next to me. Jane Ellsworth and her sister Melody vie for the attention of eligible men in a world where manipulating glamour is an essential skill for a lady of quality. (Summary cannibalized from the back copy.)

Characters I Liked: Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Vincent, Jane sometimes.
Characters I Disliked: Everyone else, Jane sometimes.

Things I Liked: the glamour and its use, the way the plot threads came together at the end, the second half of the book

Things I Disliked: Melody, the way Jane was a smart girl but had to be completely stupid for the plot at times, usually in regard to Melody, did I mention Melody?

I enjoyed the book, especially toward the end, but the objective part of my brain found several things to dislike. This has never happened to me before, which is one reason I wanted to write up this review. Normally, if my objective-writer brain starts pointing things out, my subjective-reader brain is ruined for the story. That was not what happened here.

Objectively, I thought the characterizations lacking in most of the cast - or in Jane’s case, and also Mr. Dunkirk’s, inconsistent. Melody, Mrs. Ellsworth, and Lady FitzCameron were horribly one-dimensional, and as the dimension was an unpleasant one each I found myself rolling my eyes whenever they were on the page.

I wish I could lay out exactly where I was bothered by Jane, but I don’t do spoilers, so I will say simply it is in regard to Beth and Melody and the flat-out obviousness of what was happening. I don’t have a problem with the obviousness, I have a problem with Jane’s ignorance to it. (I know this will make sense only to those who have read it, and apologize.)

That said, the book was fun. The time period was lovely and nicely-rendered, the ending had a more modern flair to it than I think Jane Austen would have done, but I appreciated that. I want to read Ms. Kowal’s novel, not a pain-staking rendition of Austen. It was easy to pick up and put down and read quickly, which was good. I do recommend it.

That said, I’ve also tried something different this past month as my attention span shortens in direct proportion to the temperature: reading more than one book at time. I never used to, but lately it’s been working for me. I have a bit of ennui and don’t feel like dropping into one book for hours on end, so alternating has helped.

What’s my schedule? Well, I allow myself to read a chapter or so from Kiersten White’s PARANORMALCY if I hit my goal during the morning writing session. Then throughout the day I was reading Mary Robinette Kowal’s SHADES OF MILK AND HONEY, while I ate, during breaks between things, just in snatches. (Though I finished it yesterday.) Then during my Designated Reading Times, late afternoon waiting for Toady to get home and in the evenings when we’re relaxing, that’s for Dan Simmons’s DROOD. I used to just read the same book for all those ’slots’ until it was done.

But, about DROOD for a minute. I have been wanting an e-reader (in theory), but thanks to this beast I really want one (in practice). This book is almost 800 pages. I can’t read it for too long because my arms get tired holding the hardcover up. I’m not even kidding. If ever a case could be made for e-reading, this book does it.

How do you read? Do you have a schedule like I do? Do you do it one book at a time like I used to, or the multibook approach I’ve been trying?

And if I ever get an e-reader, it will be a Nook, but what do you like or dislike about your e-reader, if you have one?

I firmly believe you can write whatever you want however you want for yourself. There’s just a difference when it comes to writing publishably, and for the sake of argument we will define writing publishable fiction as something to be accepted by a NY traditional house.

And I find I agree with InternAmie in that regard: if you don’t have solid command of the English language, you cannot be published. Grammar and usage isn’t stressed in school anymore and it’s detrimental. We use language to communicate; how are we supposed to understand each other if we don’t use it correctly? And surely this can be learned, so it still doesn’t wholly preclude anyone from being a writer.

That said, it’s a lot harder, and a much longer road, and most people don’t have the stamina for it. Which, I would argue, is what makes them not a writer. It isn’t the inherent lack of skill, but the lack of dedication that separates.

Which means I don’t think it’s right to ever tell someone they aren’t a writer. Certainly there are people who are ‘not there yet,’ and  never will be. So they will never be published. That doesn’t mean they can’t write and enjoy the process of doing so. Isn’t that the more important thing?

Writing publishable fiction does not define a writer.

If I were to talk to InternAmie, I would hope she isn’t upset at me for saying this, as I don’t think what she’s doing is wrong: she’s an intern at a literary agency, which means these writers have submitted their work for the possibility of publication and have therefore opened themselves up to being told, you aren’t the sort of writer who should be published - ie, a hobbyist. InternAmie only has so many characters on Twitter, and as I said above, I feel confident she means ‘your work is not publishable’ when she says ‘you are not a writer.’ At least, I hope so.

I am SO PICKY about books. I don’t have a lot of discretionary income, so I HAVE to be picky. If I buy a book, I WILL finish it because I spent that money and I will get my money’s worth, darn it.

But the library? Oh, that looks interesting. Let’s see if I like it. No?

I can shut the book.

Yes, it’s taken me this long to figure that out. I was a die-hard book-finisher. Benefit of the doubt. Optimism. Mulishness. Now, I don’t have to do/be/give any of that. I’m free to like or dislike. It’s not invested with a billion other things.

I know, I’m slow to the table. Forgive me. What’s your favorite thing about libraries? (And don’t let me stop you at one. Please. Rhapsodize wildly.)

Because being a grown-up doesn’t come with an instruction manual.

Because I still feel like I’m pretending. Any minute, they’re going to figure it out, too.

Because inside, I’m still alone, only I finally realized I’m always going to be. I’m the only me there is.

Because there’s still hope.

Toady rocked his thesis presentation yesterday and is that much closer to completing his second Master’s degree. I am so proud of him my mouth hurts from smiling about it.

In other news, I have decided I need to leave the house to write because I am having trouble focusing at home. This was born out in the fact I’ve written one to three pages each day for the past five days or so, but yesterday I wrote almost 8 because I was downtown in a nicely air-conditioned Starbucks that wouldn’t let me use its Internet, and this in not even two hours. I rest my case.

Today I can’t leave the house because I have to do things like LAUNDRY so we’ll see how much writing gets done. I am determined not to be a self-fulfilling prophecy here but man that air-conditioning was nice.

(Also? the title? personal frustration, aching, about things not related to my writing. Just needed to get it out there.)

But that doesn’t mean it should be.

Think of any godly person you know and I can BET (if I were a betting woman) that they are NOT high strung. Because they have God’s peace, yes, and that means they aren’t going to be let down. They have no reason to be stressed out or hopeless. They need to trust and give Him their anxiety. (And by they I mean me.)

It’s easier said than done, this is true, but frankly I’ve just finally got to say it. There is no place for a high-strung temperament in a Christian lifestyle. This doesn’t mean everybody is serene and still. I know plenty of Type A godly women. But there is a difference between that and high strung. Having God’s peace does not mean being inactive. There is a disconnect in our society that peace cannot go hand in hand with busyness. This is untrue.

This post was inspired in part by a Bible study I went to last night that discussed these ideas tangentally, and a comment I made: If you don’t have God’s peace when you’re busy, you won’t have it at rest, either. THAT’s what being high strung looks like, being at rest and still lacking God’s peace.

You’re free to disagree - in fact, please, give me your support for why I might be wrong - but the way I’m understanding the issue, I think I’m right. How do you see it?

For instance, my new project, MERCY, has the same vibe as a WINTERGIRLS or a BEFORE I FALL (in my apparently humble opinion). So yesterday I reread WG. I’d reread BIF, too, but I don’t own it; I had gotten it out of the library to read. So I’ve moved on to BACKSEAT SAINTS because it’s got such character and heart and things I can learn from.

To me, doing this isn’t getting a roadmap. That does open the door to imitation. For instance:

“Oh, clearly I need more thematic metaphors!” leads to “Jess, I don’t think you need one when she’s just shaving her legs.”

But it CAN be a postcard. This means that instead of following someone else’s journey, I get snatches of the possibilities. And maybe I’ll see some of the same landmarks (”okay, a thematic metaphor would be appropriate here”), but maybe not. Maybe they’ll just make me excited to get on the road. Let me know to watch out for the construction on I-81.

What do you think? Do you read books similar to your WIP, or must it be a completely different type of book?