Back of the book jacket. What do you think?

After being chased away from their favorite local hangout by the school bully, two friends are forced to seek solace in the nearby uninhabited mountains.  There they make a startling discovery.  A helmet that grants its wearer almost unlimited wishes.  But, there is a potentially deadly secret linked with the use of the helmet.

 

Come along as Tyson and Conner seek to uncover the mystery behind the Magic Helmet.  A journey that tests the bonds of friendship with danger and betrayal.  A coming of age adventure that could cause one of the two boys to lose their very soul.

Book progress-Rough Draft Complete.

As of 1:30am this morning, the rough draft for the new children’s/Young Adult (It has probably graduated to solely Young Adult) novel I am writing, has been completed.  Since Wednesday, the story took on a life of its own and decided that it had to be put to paper now.  Just to support that fact, at the end of writing on Wednesday, my word count was 30571.  At completion of the rough draft, my word count ended up at 49335.  With some quick math that ends up just shy of 19000 words on Thursday, Friday and Saturday.   An average of 6254 words a day.  A more normal day of writing for me is anywhere from 1500-3000 words.  Interesting, is all I can say.  I guess I was just in the writing zone.  You don’t enter it all the time, but when you do, you just go nuts and you have to ride it out.  You can’t stop and say, Ok, I’ve met my quota for today.  It doesn’t work that way.   My target was 50000, so hopefully when going through the first re-write, I’ll find the additional words while strengthening certain plot points.  The first edit is always the most fun.  (Probably not really, but…)  You, for the first time, sit down and read what you’ve put down on paper.  When you’re writing, at least when I’m writing, I’m typing furiously getting the story down.  On the re-read, you find where you just plain forgot to put a word in a sentence or find that you’ve doubled up a word or used the wrong word or find that you’ve used too similar of a word too many times in the preceding paragraph.  How many times did I just use the word, word?  Get the point?

So, the refining process begins.  I’ll sharpen up the first three chapters, then submit it and see if I get any bites.  This is the process that sucks for so many authors.  Finding that one agent/publisher, who is interested in the morsel that you are offering.  Now, I remember why I hate fishing.  J

My daughter is my 12 year old test reader and she finished the rough draft this afternoon and she loved it.  I’m waiting for my adult test readers to complete their read through by this afternoon.  Feedback from them has been extremely positive to this point, which is exciting as this is just the very first draft, errors and all. 

Now, on to the critics.  

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Book update

Ok, so I’ve passed the 50% completion mark on the new kids novel I’m writing.  The characters in my book are both 12 years old, so my daughter was here this week and I decided to see if she would like it.  Now, as I write, I do have a test reader, but she is an adult, and while, thankfully, she loves it so far, she isn’t the target market I am looking for.  But, now enter my daughter.  She started it yesterday and couldn’t put it down.  She finished up what I have completed this morning and she came downstairs and said.  “I love your book.  I really love your book.  I want to read more.”  Of course I was very happy.  I also had to do the:  “Do you like it because I want you to like it or do you really like it?”  Speech.  She said she genuinely loves it, so I’m happy.  I’m off to Vegas this next week, so I’m hoping to be able to put some serious time into completing the first rough draft.  Crossing my fingers I’ll finish soon and then start the fun process of shopping it around.  I’ve received some great feedback and advice on self publishing lately, so that is an avenue I intend to explore as well.

Book progress

Well the new book is moving along.  About 20% complete.  Writing a kids/young adult book is definitely a different concept for me and I’m constantly having to put myself back into my 12 year old mindset.  You won’t hear me say body, because that would be just scary.  Anyway I digress.  The story is developing well and the characters seem to be moving in the right direction.  At least they are still doing what they are told and not talking back.  I’m assuming it’s only a matter of time though before they start to. 

The more I write the more I just want to do this for a living.  The toughest part is breaking into the business and getting noticed.  You’ve heard the saying:  It’s not what you know, but who you know.  Unfortunately that is oh so true.  I think location plays a part of it as well, although with more and more agents/publishers taking the electronic route, I believe it will get easier and easier to write from a far in the future.  But, still being in NY or LA would be a benefit at first.  Not going to happen from my part, but…what do you do?  Muddle through and hope you are one of the few who makes it, I guess.

Getting a book published

One of the most frustrating aspects of writing a novel has to be finding an agent.  You would think that after spending the time to dream up a great story with a strong plot line, great characters and a good ending (some authors just can’t seem to write an ending very well) that finding an agent and getting published would be the easy part.  WRONG!!  First off you have to find an agent who has an appetite for the genre you are writing about.  Fine, once that is done and you’ve compiled your list, you then have to find out how to get your material to them.  Here is where it gets fun.  Not literally, please hear the sarcastic inflection in my writing.  Some agents want you to send a query letter.  Trying to pare your novel down to a paragraph or two and expecting someone to really be able to judge your work from a query.  I don’t get it.  Pretty much don’t like the query letter process, but you have to play by the rules in the system that you are bound by.  So, you write a query letter.  Hi, my name is Blake…blah, blah, blah.  If you are a newer author, you know what I’m talking about.  Now you have to get it to the agent you are targeting.  Some like e-mail (my personal favorite) some like snail mail (not so much my favorite) which you have to include a SASE to get their response.  Now that the query has gone out, the waiting game begins.  The e-mail route usually gets the quickest response.  The frustrating part here is when you get a response saying, sorry, we’re not looking for this genre right now, even though their website says, hey, we’re looking for this genre.  So, I guess a pet peeve of mine is, I’m not looking to waste their time and I don’t want my time wasted either.  I wish they would update their info.  Let me clarify here a bit.  I only had three agents give me this response, not a ton, but still, that was wasted effort for me and frankly for them as well. 

Anyhoo, the point is, an agent may or may not see what you have to offer.  They may not be in the best mood when they receive your request or they have some minimum wage worker reading the mail and passing on what they like to their agent.  I’m here to make the agent money as well as myself.  I just want to get my book to the masses, since I don’t have the resources to put it out there.  So, if any of you know of a good agent, who is looking for an author who plans to write a minimum of two books a year in two separate genres (More releases, more money), please send them my way.

My primary genre is Science Fiction/Fantasy.  I’ve completed the first book in a trilogy and am dying to get this beauty published.  The current working title (not sure I’m 100% in love with it, by the way) is:  Dargon Rising.  I also have an epic fantasy series that I’m planning on writing as well, so here are at least six books ready to make an agent, plus myself, money over the next few years.

My second genre is Children’s/Young Adult.  Having two publishers allows you to have two books in print in a year.  For an author, that’s how you are going to survive and be able to pay the bills.  I’m currently working on my first book in a series for this genre.  The title is:  The Magic Helmet.  When I was in elementary school I started writing a story with this same title.  Reading that imaginative work has inspired me to dust the idea off and re-tool it for a more modern twist.  Put it this way, in that original book, the video games being discussed, were the stand up big boys, like Star Wars and Pac Man.  Now with PS3 and other platforms out there, plus the advances in technology, my characters are living large.

Alright, that’s enough for now.  I’ll be writing more later.  I appreciate any comments and feedback.  I’d love to hear the frustrations that you have gone through on a similar journey and what the end result was for you.

 

Thanks,

Blake