Number 100! And a Treat!

Woot!  Despite my shitty blogging skills, I've officially passed my 100th post!  Sure, most of them have come from the two April A-Z blogfests I've done, but hey, they're entries.

I hope you've been entertained and informed...at least that was my intention.

Anyway, because it's such a nice round number, I thought I'd make a little announcement.  I've officially crossed into "novel" territory with my manuscript!  As I mentioned in one of my other posts from forever ago, a "novel" in the romance world is something that is 40,000 words or more, and I'm clocking about 41k at the moment.  Go, me!

Brad Pitt is THRILLED for me.

It won't be much longer than this; maybe I'll hit 45k, though I'm not likely to make it to the 50k mark, but hey, stranger things have happened.  The story is winding down, and I'm in the home stretch.  I've mostly been re-reading and editing as I go, as well as fleshing out scenes where I basically wrote, "And stuff happened here."

So, because I'm so excited to hit both 100 AND 40k in a short period of time, you guys are in for a treat.  My lovely critique partner, Shelley, has helped me pick a new title for the manuscript.  It was titled The Curse, which I wasn't married to, and good thing I wasn't because I was given some great feedback that it sounded like I was referring to a lady's "that time of the month." If ya know what I mean. And just so we're clear, I mean menstrual cycle.  Well, that wasn't going to fly, so I've picked a new working title for it (it still may be re-titled by a publisher if one picks it up) but for now, I'm going with....

...drumroll please...

Fate's Awakening. 

I really like it, and I hope you guys do too!  If you're curious about Fate's Awakening, check out the little tab above labeled Novels, or click here.

Even better, if you tune in tomorrow, I'll post a short excerpt from the prologue!  That's how excited I am!  But please keep in mind that none of this has been professionally edited, or even accepted for publication, so it's probably crap.  But I still want to share my crap with you, you lucky readers.  

xoxo Sarah

The Sparkly Blue Retainer...A Parable

I'm probably misusing the term "parable" but I kind of don't care.

Anyway...

When I was a kid, I had braces.  My teeth were a hot mess, so on they went when I was about ten or so.  I had a love/hate relationship with them, and a year and a half later, I got them off.

With my new freedom came...the retainer.  So I guess "freedom" isn't the word for it.  I mean, I could eat peanuts and chew gum again to my little heart's content, and instead of this:

Let's be fair...no one looks this good with metalmouth.

I looked like this:

Her, either.

But to hell with it, at least they weren't braces!  

I was told I had to wear the stupid thing all the time at first, 24/7, so I figured I'd like to at least like my new torture device. So when they came in to take the mold for it and they asked if I wanted glitter, of course I said yes!  What twelve-year-old girl wouldn't?  But I did come away disappointed--they didn't offer any colors.  See, I really wanted a blue one.  Even better would have been a sparkly blue one.  Blue, with blue glitter.  A friend of mine--just one friend, this was the mid-1990s when braces were becoming more mainstream--had a blue one, and I was...er...blue?...with jealousy, especially since I had to settle.  

Truthfully, as much as I wanted one, I probably wouldn't have gotten the blue one...I'd been picked on enough in school, and decided that since people would be seeing it (I had to take it out to eat), I should stick to something fairly neutral.  No sense in giving the bullies more theoretical ammo.  Pre-teen kids are assholes, by the way, and that was way more than enough to persuade me to suck it up and settle for something I was only "meh" about, not that I had much of a choice given what was available.

So I got my mouth-pink glittery retainer.  I wore that damn thing religiously, even though I hated it and it made me feel like I was going to puke all the time.  I never even lost it; never even accidentally--or maybe that should be "accidentally"?--threw it out on my lunch tray at school.  Then I was finally given the green light to just wear it at night, and I looked forward to the day when I could wean myself off it for good and be "normal."

That day never came.  

I tried, but my teeth and jaw would ache like a sonovabitch if I didn't wear it for more than one night, and it was actually a relief to put it back in.  I also observed my peers not wearing theirs, and their teeth would migrate like retarded homing pigeons back to where they'd been before they had braces--and in some cases, they were actually worse-off.  And there was no WAY I was going to let that happen.  I'd suffered for beauty (and happy teeth, but mostly beauty), goddammit, and I wasn't going to have wonky teeth just because. 

Fast-forward years later (to 2011, actually), and I was still wearing the same pinky glittery thing.  I'd taken great care of it; it was clean and crack-free, but loose after something like sixteen years.  I'd always been complimented on my "bite" by my dentists and my teeth were good, but a visit to a recommended orthodontist confirmed it was time for a new one.

Molds were taken, and then the moment came--the one I'd been waiting for.

The color selection.  

And you know what?  I picked out a blue, sparkly retainer.  I was a grown women, dammit, and I wasn't going to let anything stand in the way of what I wanted.  I was going do and get what made me happy.  

So now I have one of these:

Not a picture of my actual retainer.  I wanted to respect its privacy.

So the moral of this whole convoluted story is that you should do what makes you happy, no matter what anyone thinks (unless it's hurting yourself or someone else).  

And I think we need to remember that more often.  

xoxo Sarah

Father's Day

Since I thoroughly embarrassed my mother for Mother's Day, I figured what the heck and decided to do the same for my dad.

Where should I start?

I should begin by saying that I'm an only child, but my dad--a manly half-Italian guy with a 70's pornstache--never seemed to mind being outnumbered by women.  Nothing was deemed too manly or girly; he'd play games with me, and he taught me to drive a stick-shift.  I have some mad Cribbage skillz (yes, skills with a "z" because I'm badass like that) because of him.

This is James Franco. My dad doesn't look like James Franco, but the mustache is similar.
My dad's 'stache is more spectacular, however.

We share the same nose (all the better to smell you with, my dear), and even a weird little gap between two side teeth that appears to be genetic--in pictures of his mother, I've seen that she had it, too.  I'll even go so far to blame him for the fact that, on occasion, I seem to sport more facial hair than my husband.  Dad and I also share a similar sense of humor, a love of terrible puns, a baffling enjoyment of car shopping, and Indiana Jones.

That actually reminds me of a little story.  When I was a kid, sick and home from school, my dad would often come home for lunch to see how I was doing.  Sometimes he'd bring me a flower to cheer me up, but he always came by with a smile and made my day brighter.  One one such occasion, probably when I was around ten--I can't remember--he put on a video for me.  It was an off-TV recording of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and we sat there watching it until he had to leave.  I was hooked, and it's been one of my favorite movies ever since.

My dad's also been one of my biggest inspirations.  When he was younger, he worked hard to put himself through school, coming away with a degree in accounting.  Why anyone would love numbers that much, I have no idea, but that's neither here nor there.  After a fashion, he realized that wasn't for him--he hated the idea of being cooped up in an office, and since then, worked in outdoorsy positions.  To make a decision like that--to take the leap and not spend a lifetime stuck doing something you don't like--takes a lot of guts, and he's always encouraged me to do something that made me happy.  Even though he's not a big reader--he loves stories, but prefers a visual medium--he's been one of my biggest cheerleaders and has promised to read everything I write.  

I'll close with another picture of a spectacular mustache, just because.

Tom Selleck, and Tom Selleck's mustache, which must get paid more than he does by this point.

Happy Father's Day, Dad!  

xoxo Sarah

The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy...

One of the most fascinating concepts--to me, anyway--in psychology, is the self-fulfilling prophecy.  In a nutshell, it's an idea or concept that becomes reality, simply because a person believes that it's true.  Sadly, this is more often the case with negative concepts rather than positive ones.

Case in point: Why are people so awestruck when people succeed--despite unlikely or unfavorable circumstances--yet no one is surprised when someone fails given the same?

Why am I bringing this up?  Because no one likes to believe that SFPs (as I'll abbreviate it, because I'm lazy), apply to them.  I'm not saying SFPs are the be-all-end-all of a person's motivation.  Certainly not; there are lots of factors at play here.  But, there's no denying that what a person thinks they can do will more often than not be exactly that.

I had a bit of an epiphany a month or so ago.  I was working on my novel/novella thingy (wonky word count = no category yet), in hopes of getting it done, edited, and ready to query sometime in the near future.

"Near future" being the key words there...

I was sitting there, staring at the Word doc and thinking, "Sweet Jesus on a velociraptor, this thing is taking me forever!  It's only 40,000ish words [about 120 double-spaced Word pages], and I have writer friends who have cranked out full-length novels [60K-100K words] in a month!  I even know one who wrote one in a couple of weeks!  Sure, what they wrote isn't anywhere near final draft form, but neither is what I'm writing, either!  Every writer goes at their own pace, but what the hell is wrong with me that I can't even get this damn thing finished?"

At that point, I started feeling like a full-on failure.  I'm not proud to admit it, but there was a pity party, and everyone knows that there ain't no party like a pity party, 'cuz a pity party don't stop.  

There was more irrational self-loathing, eating of chocolate, loud wailing, and there might have been some fetal position in there somewhere, but eventually it petered out.  

What made it stop?  My epiphany.  I'm getting there, so hold your horses.  Even horses like to be held sometimes.

I asked myself why this manuscript was taking so long, and I couldn't come up with a good answer, which is really shitty when you're asking yourself questions--if anyone would know, it's you.  No, I hadn't lost interest in it; if anything, I was more excited to get it done. No, it wasn't going to be super-long and there was no end in sight; I estimated that I was less than 10K words from typing "THE END".  Blah, blah, blah...

Even worse, was that I didn't even have a good answer to why some of my lovely fellow authors had the super-human ability to become writing machines.  I mentally spouted bullshit like, "Oh, they're already published, so they're more familiar with the process than I am."  Not necessarily true; I edit for a publisher, so I'm familiar with the other end of an author's journey, even though I haven't been there as an author myself.  And, "They probably have a lot more free writing time, yeah, that's it." Again, not necessarily true--many of them have kids, jobs other than writing, and other things that take up a lot of valuable writing time.  Again, blah, blah, blah...

So what was it?  Why was this manuscript taking forever?  The answer was so simple that I was floored when I figured it out. 

Ready?  

Here it is:  Because I thought it was supposed to. 

That's it.  I thought a manuscript, this labor of literary love, was supposed to take a long time to write.  I mean, you hear about people who have been working on their manuscript for years, and take even longer than that to get published, so, somewhere along the line, my brain had adopted that as a weird mantra I wasn't even aware of.  

My brain rationally knows that novels will take a bit to write, but somehow that had translated into a ridiculously long time with nebulous ideas of when things like the query process would even take place.  Because I believed it, even unconsciously, it was happening for me.  My manuscript was taking forever.  

Now that I'm aware of this, I can consciously make decisions and take actions that will help combat this SFP.  

Have you ever experienced a self-fulfilling prophecy, whether it's about writing or anything else? 

xoxo Sarah

Mother's Day

So, the publisher I edit for, Omnific, is doing a blog bounce for Mother's Day where we share things about mothers...favorite literary or movie mothers, childhood memories, and other stuff.

I figured I'd take the opportunity to talk a little about my own mother (or "Mum" as they say over here across the pond).

And I'll probably make her cry, which, quite honestly, isn't so hard to do.

Mom, you're reading this now and laughing and crying a little.

Don't lie.  I know it.

Anyway...

My mother always encouraged me to read...from when I little, I remember her reading books to me before bed.  She'd prop them up so I could see the words and follow along, whether they were simple narratives like Dr. Seuss or chapter books, and that's one of the ways I learned to read.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I was the only kid in my first grade class who could functionally read anything and understand it beyond the basics; something around a fourth grade level, I believe.  I credit Mom with making me a pain in the ass to the teachers, who had no idea what to do with me while they were teaching all the other kids how to sound out words.  They ended up farming me out to another teacher who could work with me.

They were trying to avoid this scenario. 

Have I mentioned that my mother's a librarian?  No?  Well, I should.  She's taught in schools--both high school and elementary--for most of my life, and worked in our town's public library as well.  When I was in college and on break, she'd come home with new books they'd gotten in, and that she was going to read for storytime.  Well, you need to practice that stuff...get the inflections and pauses down so the kids with their two second attention spans don't lose interest.  So who did she practice reading the books to? Me, that's who.

It looked like this, only with just a twenty-something in sweat pants on the floor.

Now, she comes to me for book recommendations.  I haven't told her my review on Everybody Poops, though.

Mom's always been one of my biggest supporters, whether it's of my editing position or of my writing, and has promised to read whatever I do write, even when she'd rather pretend that I know a lot less about this stuff than I should. 

How I imagine the first reading of my novel will be from my mother's perspective. My excuse will be that she asked for it.

 So happy Mother's Day, Mom!  The next book's on me.

xoxo Sarah

A-Z? Not this year...

For those of you looking forward to my A-Z Challenge posts, I unfortunately can't participate this year.  My own work and professional editing have to come first.

But, for those of you who are interested in participating or are wondering what it is, here's their link.  There's still time to sign up, and it's a lot of fun.  If you scroll through my labels in the side-bar, you can access my A-Z Challenge-related posts from the past, including some ideas of strategy.

http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

In other awesome news, I'll be at the London Book Fair in the middle of April with the publisher I work for! I'm super excited to actually meet some of the people I work with.  If you're in London, come check it out!  There'll be publishers from all over the world there.  Plus, it's freaking LONDON.

http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/

On that note, it's time for me to get some more work done!

xoxo Sarah

Royalties and Net and Bears, OH MY!

Like it or not, writing is a business.  Sure, we'd happily sit with our laptops, typewriters, pens, pencils, Sharpies, crayons, or what have you, and crank out best-sellers til the cows come home, watching the money magically appear in our bank accounts.  There would be bon-bon eating and bubble baths in there somewhere too.

And as much as I wish it worked like that, it's not going to happen.

At RWA 2011, I attended a workshop on contracts, and, of course, royalties and payment rates were brought up.  My head was swimming with information already, so it all sounded like gibberish, but now that I'm getting closer to querying, it's something that concerns me.  

Unfortunately, most of the information out there still sounds like gibberish to me.  This stuff--math-wise, anyway--is right up there with doing taxes.  

Rather than bore you with my own garbled understanding, I'm simply going to piggyback on two blog entries.  One was done by my friend and fellow author, Laura Kaye, who did some nice neat maths (they put the "s" on math over here in the UK, so I can use it like that, dammit!) and broke some of the confusing bits down for us in a nice, easy-to-understand entry.  

The other entry is more of an informative post by author Maya Banks, who has a ton of books out and uses some real-life examples.  A lot of this entry involves digital publishing, but she is traditionally published as well.  

Laura Kaye: Royalty Rates Matter. Here's Why.

Dear Author: Maya Banks

So go ahead and check these out.  I found them very eye-opening, and would love to know what you think. And, as always, I'm happy to pass on info I thought was helpful in case someone else will find it interesting, too.

xoxo Sarah