Talkin' About My Book and Nanowrimo

[frea_o]

So for those of you who don't follow on Tumblr/Twitter/all of the other insane places I hang out, Harper Collins is doing this thing where they're accepting unagented manuscripts for two weeks for science fiction, urban fantasy, fantasy, and other genre type stories. You can read more about it here, but the gist of it is that they're looking to expand their online catalogue by printing some exclusive ebook titles.

I have a few completed books under my belt that aren’t fanfiction, but only one that I felt would meet the criteria.  My idea was to not sleep for the past three weeks (when my friend brought this to my attention) and revamp my book with my 2012 writing style, a better villain, and a more ambiguous central relationship. Unfortunately, real life has a way of laughing hysterically at me and, having gotten only three chapters redone, I decided to hand in my 2008 version instead. I think I'm being pragmatic rather than pessimistic when I say there's really not a chance in hell they'll want to publish this book, but it was nice to finally sit down and write a query letter and a synopsis for it (though I'm sure I drove my friends nuts last night).

If they decide not to publish it, here's the deal: I'm going to publish it myself. I've got some experience making ebooks, thanks to you lovely people, and the best beta reader on the planet. I don't want to jinx myself with a definite release date, but I am hard at work on the revisions for it. 

Here's some details:

• It's a full-length novel, clocking in at about 80,000 words.
• It's in first person. Pretty much everything I've written that everybody has seen from me has been in third person, so here's the hilarious part: I'm most comfortable writing in first person. 
• It's sci-fi/fantasy.
• The main character is a smart-ass.
• There's romance, there's action, there are people falling off of buildings, and other people that can fly.
• The name is really long.
• It's the first in a trilogy.
• Max already ships two characters that aren't a canon ship and has promised to write the first fanfic.
• You'll see where I got Gwen's name in Fates.

Hopefully in the coming weeks, I'll be able to point you to this great new author you'll have never heard of who's somehow releasing snippets of a book that fit exactly everything I just listed, which'll be weird because her name isn't Frea O'Scanlin but it'll be crazy how much she sounds like me, you know? ;)

In other news, it's October, which means the panic for November begins now. Is anybody doing Nanowrimo? Is anybody interested in doing Nanowrimo, but is terrified about what it is, what it entails, and needs a pep talk? If you're in St. Louis, I'll be bopping along to all of the events because the ML is a friend of mine, and I've done Nanowrimo so many times, I can offer tips, advice, and support.

Anyway, that's the news for today!

Frea

Comments

[frea-o.livejournal.com]

Confession to make: I kind of use Nanowrimo to, uh, finish stuff. The spirit of the event is that you're supposed to write a complete book in a month but here's the problem I always see with that:

Completed novels are usually at least 80k, which means you burn yourself out for 30 days for 50k words, and then you've got 30k left to go in December, which is why I think most Nanonovels actually go unfinished overall.

So I use it for a word count motivator. In 2009, I finished a book I'd been writing on and off for years and then started on another book (to be fair, I didn't have a job), in 2010, I plugged away 50k on Fates (which is less than an eighth of the story, FML), and in 2011, I plugged away 50k on various fanfictions. I'm coming back to writing original in 2012 because I hope to release the first book of the trilogy I'm working on in December and it'd be nice to have a first draft of the second book out.

That said, I really think you should do Nanowrimo, even if November's a bad month for it (it really is the worst). We could be nanobuddies! I'm Lell on the site, and I can give all sorts of scary motivation pep talks and stuff because I've got so many battle scars, it's not even funny.