Pitch to Publication: An amazing opportunity

As one of the winners in P2P, I won the chance to work for a month with Carly Bornstein, a freelance editor.

This experience has been one of the most satisfying writer-ly activities I've ever had. Carly was dead-on in her assessments of what NECTAR AND AMBROSIA needed in terms of character development. I'd had trouble with the main character being a bit one dimensional, but her fresh eyes on the manuscript showed me that the seeds were already there for development, conflict, and depth for the two lead characters.

This was where my inexperience as an author showed, unfortunately. Carly's advice to add more prominent character flaws and challenges made my manuscript so much better (and added greatly needed volume to my word count with the scenes I added).

Once again, the community of writers I worked with proved to be a supportive, cheerleading, commiserating bunch of disconcertingly talented people. Two of them have already garnered agent representation on their manuscripts, and there are other manuscripts so beautiful that I can't believe they won't be snapped up immediately.

I've learned that an editor is an invaluable resource, and that for a truly quality manuscript, you can't skip this step.

Huge thanks to Carly for all of her guidance, and to Samantha Fountain for bringing this whole thing to life.

Lots of news!

Wow, have the last couple of weeks been full of emotional highs and lows.

The high points:

1: SONG MAGICK won first place in the Dante Rossetti Awards for YA Fiction in the Fantasy category! So many thanks to Chanticleer Reviews. I can now say that I'm an award winning author, and it feels AWESOME. I'll write more about this when I can think straight.

2: I finished the first draft of TRUTHSONG, and the raw, bleeding pages are in the hands of my alphas for plot and storyline consistency. I've started tweaking the chapters and making them not so much wordsploosh on a page so that I'll be ready to incorporate what they tell me.

3: I've received and turned around my first set of notes with my professional editor Carly Bornstein for NECTAR AND AMBROSIA. She gave me so many valuable suggestions...I spent three days revising (with one day off to spend with my best friend, who was in town from North Carolina!). I should have her in-line editing notes late next week for the next round.

Those were the emotional highs, and they were some big ones!

The lows were that two of the people I love most are battling serious health issues, one in the hospital, and one at home. If you have some good energy or prayers that can be spared, send them our way. We'd appreciate some good juju.

I promise a much better post will come soon. I'm just really tired tonight after working, but wanted to update!

I get to work with an EDITOR!!

OK, yeah, so everybody knows I've kind of become a Twitter contest masochist. I really do love them for the sense of writer community - albeit an arms' length, introverted kind of sense of community.

I've been having trouble finding the sweet spot for pitching this manuscript. I've gotten a lot of really nice compliments from agents I queried, but it hasn't reached out and grabbed anyone, for the most part. This leads me to believe that it could use professional eyes.

I entered Pitch to Publication kind of on a whim. I hadn't really planned to; there were a couple other contests at the same time that I was going to try. I saw one of the editors was hoping for mythology-inspired manuscripts, and with some encouragement from a friend (thank you, Samantha!), I decided to go ahead and enter in hope of the chance to work with a professional editor to revise my manuscript.

Most of the contest aftermaths look like this if we aren't chosen:

We all feel like we're not good enough. It's a major ego blow, because non-writers don't realize just how much courage it takes to put our material out there in the face of almost certain rejection. It's almost never brutal rejection- quite the opposite. Twitter has some of the most supportive souls on it in the form of agents, editors and writers that I've had the good fortune to meet. My CP group, the illustrious Beta Babes, are just some of them.

But this time...THIS time...

My name was on the winners list.

I now have the opportunity to work with editor Carly Bornstein on my manuscript for Nectar and Ambrosia for a month! I am still happy dancing around.

I've already told my family that I will have deadlines I have to meet. They know I value my writing time and they interrupt me at their own peril, LOL. At the end of the month, there will be an agent round where literary agents bid on full manuscript requests. After that: a publisher round for indies and small publishers where they can also bid on the manuscripts. (I had just sent off a full manuscript at a small publisher's request, and respectfully retracted it in order to take advantage of this opportunity to work with Carly. It can only make it better.)

I am having even more confidence that Nectar and Ambrosia will see the light of day in the near future.

X-Files Geeksplosion

I'm just sitting here this morning, minding my own business and checking Facebook when I saw it.

Mulder and Scully are back.

I was surprised at the visceral, immediate nerdgasm I experienced on hearing that creepy little synthesizer riff. I actually squee'd.

I missed them so much. I was a faithful viewer every week, even when the show got a little--err, iffy, there toward the end. I even saw the movie.

But they're back, a little longer in the tooth, with flashlights blazing in search of The Truth.

And I can't wait. January, baby.

Goodbye vacation, hello Twitter stalking

It's been a great eleven days off. We did absolutely nothing for ten of them! I power slammed the entire season of Sense8 (watch it!), watched 'Chappie', and basically hung out with my kids and hubby at home except for one day trip on Wednesday. It was awesome.

In between, I got stuff ready for two contests. Hi, my name is Lisa, and I'm becoming a contestaholic. Holy cow. I get glued to the TweetDeck feed watching for hints on whether they're talking about my entry when they're gushing. Depending on my state of mind, it's either: 

Or, if it's something that might be mine and it's negative:

The coolest thing about the writers in the Twitterverse is how we all pull together to cheer each other on. 

I have learned so much from the authors and editors and agents I meet during these contests that I don't feel completely guilty for stalking Twitter like a fiend. 

Tomorrow I go back to work *sigh*. 

Good luck to everybody in the #pg70pit and #PitchtoPublication !

A lack of empathy

I've always been fascinated by characters in books who have an empathic bond with each other- it's probably why my first book naturally featured the concept of lifemates. It was no surprise then, that I've become obsessed with the show 'Sense8' on Netflix, which features a cadre of eight people all over the world who can share thoughts, sensations, skills, and emotional support through a bond that transcends distance and language.

One of the characters said in an episode that he felt their gift was once more common, but humans had found a way to breed it out because it hindered the one thing that humans do best-  it's easier to kill when they feel nothing.

It made an impact on me. How could we possibly hurt another human being as easily as we do now, if we could feel emotions and see through their eyes of others how much pain we inflict? Offhanded, passive aggressive comments. Deliberate emotional manipulation. Domestic violence. Racism and oppression. Warfare.

Many writers have explored this theme. For the most part, the consensus is that species who have managed to develop a sense of empathy are peaceful and at harmony with themselves and others. Trouble usually comes when a less sensitive species who has not developed this gift moves into the neighborhood. The empathic race is inevitably on the losing end of the conflict.

In the series 'Sense8' these gifted individuals are hunted down and experimented upon, treated as dangerous fugitives. There are obvious parallels drawn in the series in our society: racism, poverty, prejudice, the denial of equal rights to same-sex partners to see their loved ones in intensive care. These eight characters face all of these things in addition to persecution for being something a little more than human.

I have often noted with despair that the trait of empathy is indeed being bred out: that people have somehow come to believe that compassion makes people weak. The drive to succeed, to be right at all costs, to defend our own rigidly held beliefs has become more important than the welfare of the fellow inhabitants on this planet.

It makes me very sad that things as small as the amount of melanin in one's skin, whether we believe or don't believe in a higher power, or check red or blue boxes on election day cause such dissent among human beings. Indeed, there are some who ridicule people like me as "bleeding liberal", "hippie tree hugger" because I am more a humanist than anything: I feel that our primary reason for existing is to take care of each other. Heaven forbid that we do that. It might force us to feel something uncomfortable.

Without empathy, it becomes impossible to care for others, yet the same individuals will complain bitterly that nobody helps them out. It's hard to do when it isn't encouraged by society. Movements like the random acts of kindness show us that empathy is still there, but we've fallen out of practice. We need reminders to be decent human beings.

Human beings need reminders to be human. If that isn't irony, what is?

I'll continue to look forward to this show for the fulfillment of that fascination I have with human connection that transcends speech, religion, sexual preference, race, or geography.

And I'll mourn the fact that it's still considered science fiction.

Music is magic

    Music has always been an enormous part of my life. Each year, it seemed there was a "song of the summer" for me, usually the one I heard most at the community pool. One year, it was Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street", which remains an all time favorite of mine. Another year, it was Kansas "Carry On My Wayward Son", a favorite I now share with my daughter, who discovered it via 'Supernatural'.

     I love sharing common music with my kids, and when they were younger, we'd sing along to Owl City or songs from 'Phineas and Ferb' in the car. My son and I now sing together to Fall Out Boy's "Immortals" and "Centuries"--a mark of his changing taste in music as he grows up more quickly than Mom's heart can stand. My daughter and I share Broadway soundtracks, and the song "For Good" from 'Wicked' becomes more poignant each time we sing it, as I face the fact that she is now an adult.

     Back in the dark ages (the 80's), I used to wish there was a way that I could pick and choose the music I wanted without having to buy the whole cassette tape or record album. CD's came along, and with them the ability to burn music, but it was the advent of MP3 that for me was a gift from the gods. I can have all my 80's New Wave favorites like Thomas Dolby, Peter Murphy, Madness, and Duran Duran right alongside my Rush and Incubus, and my newer favorites like Of Monsters and Men, Fall Out Boy and 30 Seconds to Mars cued up in between. My childhood in the 70's is represented by John Denver and The Carpenters. (I am not ashamed! Those 8 track tapes in the van on our long vacations defined my need for car music.)

     The streaming music function on my phone is the best thing that ever happened to me. I can't even drive to the store without my music. I have a subscription to Rhapsody, and whenever I  hear something I like I just add it to my playlist. (Most recent addition: Bastille's "Pompeii" and "Bad Blood".)

    Having my favorite songs at my fingertips saves my life on those long workday road trips when my next patient is 60 miles away. I can sing at the top of my lungs to save my sanity after the second visit to pronounce a death in two hours.

    But more and more now, it's a way of recapturing youth: my own, and my children's. With these songs, I will always be twelve and on vacation with my parents and brother, fourteen at the pool staring down at the blue water from the high dive board, or sixteen and watching the first days of MTV.

     Or in the car five short years ago, when my kids were still little in my eyes.