YA Book Recommendation

While in my nearest bookstore, looking for ways to blow more money, I wandered into the YA section and stumbled on The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. I finished it yesterday afternoon.

From Rick Riordan's site: "With the help of a satyr and a daughter of Athena, Percy must journey across the United States to catch a thief who has stolen the original weapon of mass destruction – Zeus’ master bolt. Along the way, he must face a host of mythological enemies determined to stop him. Most of all, he must come to terms with a father he has never known, and an Oracle that has warned him of betrayal by a friend. "

One caveat. Riordan's allusion to science being a fad concerns me a bit - especially when you consider younger readers are more impressionable and can be easily swayed. But if you're considering buying this book for a child in your life, just explain the fiction angle of it all, and you should be fine.

Other than that, this was an enjoyable read. Lots of action and plenty to think about while you're racing across the country with Percy and his pals.

I was going to say how I'm looking forward to the next book, but if you follow the link to Riordan's site, you'll the next two are already out.

Ack. Now I have some shopping to do.

Done

Okay. This is it. Other than a few tweaks, I think I have a blow-by-blow synopsis that is neither expansive nor boring. Unfortunately, there are too many plot spoilers for me to detail it here.

Anyone who wants to give it a looksee, let me know. Any volunteers would be greatly appreciated, and I am offering payment either in the form of a free book of your choice from my store or reciprocal readings of your query, synopsis, outline, or writing.

The new synopsis is just under 5 pages or 1549 words. Should be a breeze, but I can't look at it any more and remain objective.

Any takers?

Expansion

How does one expand a synopsis without it sounding like a laundry list of events? Hmmm?

That is today's main problem. Yesterday, I worked on doing a Blow-by-blow synopsis. Chapter by chapter until my eyes began to bleed and I set it aside. Tearing my hair out, almost literally, I set the damn thing aside and told myself my one-pager was going to have to be good enough. If they want 3 pages, I'll just double-space it and be done with it. What a weight off my back that was.

Last night I wrote a most excellent cover letter--using elements from former query letters and putting a new spin to make it directed toward publication rather than representation. I'm pretty proud of it. Using the publisher's guidelines, I zipped through the particulars - genre, subgenre, word count, etc. - then I added a nice paragraph on my qualifications for writing this particular novel (Caldera, or NOD, is the one book so far where I can actually say I'm qualified to talk about some of the subject matter) and a lovely paragraph on where my book would fit on the shelves. Gotta love the fact that Follett, Crichton and Clancy have all written books where the environmentalists are the bad guys. (Well, in Follett's case, it's more hippies than enviros, but close enough to mention.) This is one of those cases where it's good to be slightly similar, so you can say "My book should be shelved here."

Anyway, I have the letter, and I was going to print all the pertinent stuff out to send this morning, but I woke with renewed vigor for writing the blow-by-blow. I didn't settle for 'good enough' when I wrote the book, and I'll be damned if I'm going to settle now. So there. =op

So, today will be spent slogging through writing a blow-by-blow without making it sound like a litany. Which means I probably won't be able to send my packet out tomorrow, because after I write this sucker, I'm going to need someone to look at it again before I send it out. Ugh.

Onward!

The Flying Leap

Taking the big leap, I'm prepping a packet to send to a publisher. I know, bypassing the agent step isn't always the best way to go, but in this case, I'm just taking a flying jump into the fray.

"Why" you ask?

Look at it as trying something new. I haven't exhausted all the possible agents in the world, but when I heard about a well-known publisher who's taking unagented submissions, I figured I'd give it a go. Nothing ventured; nothing gained.

The packet will consist of the first 57 pages of Nature of Destruction (Caldera), my nifty neat synopsis, and a yet-to-be-written cover letter. (And always the handy-dandy SASE.) They're asking for the first three chapters or the first 40-60 pages, and since this book's first three amount to 85 pages, I decided to give them the first two and the beginning of chapter 3. The first two probably would meet their requirements--ending at pg 50--but the first scenes in chapter 3 are so essential, I'm jumping at the chance to include them, too.

Additionally, their idea of a synopsis is 3-10 pages, and as I'm sure you all know (and are sick of hearing about by now) mine is just over 1 page. So, my nifty neat synopsis is going to have to expand to meet their needs. After the slice and dice I did on it, it's not going to be an easy task, but I'm going to suck it up and do it anyway. Besides, any writing is good practice for the future. Right?

Anyway, with any luck, the packet will be heading out Monday morning. Then comes the waiting game. The expected lead time on this submission is posted as 4-6 months. Maybe I'll get some Christmas news. ;o)

If I do, I'll post it here as soon as I get it.

Woman's Perogative

I changed my mind. I am going to subject y'all to the latest revision of the synopsis. After all, I was up until after 11pm working on it, and I started back in on it first thing this morning. Can't do all that hard work and not let everyone see it, right?

So here is the latest incarnation, better known as version 5.

----------------------------
Synopsis: Nature of Destruction
B.E. Sanderson
Genre: Commercial Fiction
91,000 words

Under Yellowstone sits a volcano 2400 times worse than Mount Saint Helens. every 600,000 years it awakens—spewing pumice for thousands of miles, darkening the skies with ash, causing death and destruction worldwide—and it’s overdue. This time the caldera waited an extra 40,000 years.

The wait is almost over.

Seismologist Dr. Mykaela Hughes has proof the eruption is nearing, but the politicians overseeing the park choose to ignore her warnings. When Old Faithful explodes in a torrent of boiling water, they have no longer have a choice. Even though Myke knows no one can stop a volcano, she’s got the plans to control the eruption. She can save millions from its path of destruction, but only at the cost of the nation’s most beloved national park. Thousands of acres of nature mean nothing when millions of lives are at stake.

Losing her father to the forces of nature pushed Myke to pour everything she was into building Hughes Geologic Services. After all her work monitoring the megavolcano under Yellowstone, she doesn’t need anyone telling her the data is correct. After devoting her life to the potential control of nature, she doesn’t need a consensus to know her theories are sound. She just needs everyone to get out of her way.

Yellowstone’s head ranger Grayson Douglas has spent years ensuring his park’s safety and he doesn’t suspect danger could be growing under his feet. He does suspect a certain fiery scientist is bent on using Yellowstone as her own private way to grab some glory. He’s met her kind before and he won’t let a woman like that near his park again. After the geyser eruption proves Myke’s integrity, though, Gray realizes he’s spent too many years letting the past rule him. His battle against her becomes a fight to help her save America from the threat growing beneath his beautiful park.

As the eco-terrorist known as Fisher, :snip: worships nature almost as much as he hates mankind; as the great-grandson of a land-raping miner, he despises himself almost as much as he hates his money. All that money and all that hate only have one purpose—stopping Myke Hughes and her plans to destroy Yellowstone.

With hundreds of tourists dead, the politicians have no choice but to consent to Myke’s controlled eruption. Even as her plans become real, though, her every move is blocked before she evens knows she’s going to make it and all her hard work threatens to fall apart. It doesn’t take a scientist to know who’s behind it all.

Knowing who the culprit is and catching him are two different things.

When Fisher’s identity becomes public, it doesn’t stop his plot, and as he becomes a fugitive from justice, his minions carry out his sabotage and destruction for him. With every inch drilled closer to the lava, thousands of Fisher’s sacrificial lambs fill the park, hoping guilt and fear will halt the project. Despite what Fisher and his minions think, though, a bigger portion of the populous is at stake. Many may die if Myke’s plan succeeds; more will die if it doesn’t.

:snipped out the ending again - sorry:

ETA: I forgot to mention, in case you didn't notice, I changed the title of Caldera to Nature of Destruction, and I shifted the genre from Literary Thriller to Commercial Fiction. There was some question as to whether it was thrilling enough to be called a thriller and the whole literary thing was just confusing some people. Hopefully these changes will help put Caldera in a more saleable light. (And it will always be Caldera to me, so I'll probably keep referring to it here as such.)

Voluntary Meme

Shannon put this one out there and left it as a voluntary meme. (Which I truly appreciate.)

Describe 10 "weird or different experiences in your blog,"

1) I grew up living in front of a garbage dump. We had a 1.5 acre piece of land and the dump bordered it on two sides. Some of the happiest memories of my life were created in that place - running free through the hills and valleys, never thinking about the refuse buried beneath me. You see, the land closest to our house was the oldest part of the landfill and they had stopped dumping new garbage there years before. So, to me, it was no big deal. Except on butcher day. God what a smell!

2) I get really really bad deja vu. Knock you to your knees, make you nauseous kind of deja vu. Funny thing is I don't believe in mystical stuff, so the theory I have is that my mind is always thinking through every possible combination of experiences that I'm bound to hit on something similar in reality sooner or later. Knowing this doesn't make the experience any less unnerving though.

3) I once broke the knuckle in my right index finger waving at my friends. It was a big double-handed wave because we were out climbing on a little island and they'd climbed to the top. While I was at the bottom I did the big wave and clod that I am, smashed my hands together accidentally. I heard a sickening crunch and for the next few weeks I had to wear a brace on my hand. It looked like I was perpetually pointing at people.

4) Driving on a back country road in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, we came around a corner to find a large porcupine waddling his way down the middle of the road. The road was so narrow, and the trees were so thick to either side, we couldn't pass the little bugger without hitting him. Loathe to do that - both because it would have been mean and because running over a porkie means getting a flat tire - we followed behind him for at least a half mile (or about a half-hour). Always down the middle of the road, never wavering to one side or the other. We honked, and he ignored us - grousing the whole time. Finally, when he was good and ready, he waddled away through the underbrush. Oh, and if you've never heard a porcupine, they sound like grumpy old men.

5) Just outside of Marquette, MI is Mt Sugarloaf (no, not that one). One night I had some friends visiting from back home and we decided to climb Sugarloaf in the dark. It's not particularly hard since there is a groomed trail almost all the way up and the moon was out. When we reached the top, we were just going to hang out and catch up with each other. Just the three of us lounging on top of the mountain, with the lights of Marquette sparkling in the distance and an ore carrier slowly chugging toward the harbors. It was a beautiful night, but we never expected to see a shooting star. While we were exclaiming over the first, another fell. And then another. Out of the blue, we were treated to a meteor shower. It was the second most beautiful sight I'd ever seen. The first was the northern lights from that same location.

6) As near as I can piece together, on January 11th, 1994, I was headed to work an hour early when I ran a red light. My little Chevy Citation was t-boned by an S-10 pickup doing 55 in a 45. From the newspaper photograph, he hit me square at the doors and pushed them in about 8 inches. Serendipity intervened that day. It just so happen that two ambulance drivers had been pulling into a Denny's for lunch when they noticed the parking lot was pretty crowded so they opted for KFC instead. They were just sitting down with their food when someone ran inside shouting that there'd been a terrible accident outside. The response time to my accident was less than five minutes. It intervened again when it turned out that the EMTs were experienced, and they knew that although there was another hospital closer, the best hospital for my types of injuries was only ten minutes farther out. Quick response and quick thinking is probably the best reason for why I'm sitting here right now and why I still have a brain to type these words.

7) Way back when before the internet existed, my friends and I would chat on our university's mainframe computer. There were about 20 computers in the mainframe lab and another half dozen scattered around the campus. Often there would be a core 5 or 6 of us sitting in one room talking to each other on the computer for hours on end. It was during one of these long chat sessions when I made a comment that one of the users down campus in the dorms took the wrong way. He immediately logged off. Ten minutes later, he tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to step outside. That is probably the closest I've ever come to getting into a fist fight. (He never lived it down either. It wouldn't have been half as embarassing for him if we hadn't already met in person, and he didn't already know I was a girl.)

8) About ten years later, I was a regular AOL chat junkie. In the chat room I frequented, we had one particularly snerty person who would come in and harass us on a regular basis. Once again, I let my fingers get me into trouble, only this time instead of asking me to step outside, the person in question threatened my life. He went into great detail about how he was going to hunt me down and kill me. Kind of an empty threat when you consider he had no idea who I was or where I was from, but still scary to think about.

9) I don't know how weird it is, but I've moved 6 times since June of 2001. Michigan to Florida. Florida to Utah. In Utah, I changed apartments once. Utah to Colorado. In Colorado, I've changed housing twice. Pretty strange when you think about the fact that from 1971 to 1995, I lived in the same house (other than going to away to college - but my legal address was still the same).

10) Being the youngest of five kids, and quite a bit younger than all of them, my siblings delighted in talking me into doing things. The strangest among these were: convincing me to eat dog food, convincing me not to drink root beer (because it was beer, and I wasn't allowed to have beer), wrapping me tightly in a blanket and watching me bounce around the room. If those don't at least amount to one of these ten things, I don't know what does.

Believe it or not, I'm a pretty sedate person. Not many unusual experiences in this life. Coming up with the last 4 were harder than I thought they'd be. So with that in mind, I'll leave the meme up to any of you who want to volunteer.

=oD

Again???

I spent another night working on that darned synopsis again. Thanks to my wonderful friends for doing a bit of critting for me. It really helped. I won't bore you all with the newest revision. It's tighter, it's cleaner and it explains things a bit better (I hope). If any of you want to be bored, and see the new version, leave a comment.

Thanks for your patience out there in blogreaderland. I should have some other post topics soon. (And hey, maybe one of these days I can post about publication contracts and release dates.)

Synopsis - Caldera

I said in a comment a couple of days ago that I was going to post the synopsis out here for god and everybody to read.

D'oh!

I forgot that eventually I'm going to want people to buy this book, and if I give it all away in the blog, I'm going to lose sales. So, I decided to give an abbreviated version here - with all plot spoilers removed to avoid the reader-hate. (Because I absolutely hate when people spoil the plot for me, and I don't want to perpetuate that.)

If you're one of the people who'd like to read the whole unadulterated thing, drop me an e-mail and I'll shoot it over. Otherwise, here's the snipped version:

-----------------
Every six-hundred, thousand years, the volcano under Yellowstone erupts. Right now, it’s way overdue.

When seismologist Dr. Myke Hughes confronts the government with proof the eruption is nearing, they choose to ignore her warnings. When Old Faithful explodes in a torrent of boiling water, they have no longer have a choice. Even though Myke knows no one can stop a volcano, she’s got the plans to control the eruption—to save the millions in its path, but at the cost of the nation’s most beloved national park. With nature at risk, eco-terrorist Fisher will use every nasty trick he can think of to stop Myke’s plan. Even if it means taking out a few pesky human lives along the way.

Driven by demons of her own, Mykaela Hughes poured everything she was into building Hughes Geologic Services. After years of monitoring the megavolcano under Yellowstone, she doesn’t need anyone telling her the data is correct. After devoting her life to finding a way to thwart nature, she doesn’t need a consensus to know her theories are sound. She just needs everyone to get out of her way so she can avert the disaster she knows is coming.

Decades as Yellowstone’s head ranger have given Gray Douglas comfort in the safety of his park. After all, volcanic activity has always been a part of its grandeur. He doesn’t see the danger growing under his feet. All he does see is a certain fiery scientist bent on using Yellowstone as her own private way to grab some glory, and he won’t let a woman like that hurt him or his park again.

Heir to a fortune he couldn’t earn, :spoiler snip: wallows in the achievements only the environmentalist movement could bring him. His wealth brings him the power he craves so he can finally rule the world he hates. Masquerading as the eco-terrorist known only as Fisher, :snip: believes men are only as valuable as his need for them, and he very rarely needs them. Fisher has money enough to do what he likes, but as the great-grandson of a land-raping miner, he hates his money almost as much as he hates mankind. Money only has one purpose for him now though—funding the fight against Myke Hughes.

After the geyser eruption, Gray realizes he’s spent years as a pawn for men like :snip: and his lackeys. His battle to stop Myke becomes a fight to help her save America from the threat growing beneath his beautiful park.

Finally Myke’s plans for a controlled eruption are moving forward. The drills she’s so carefully designed are on their way, and the government has stopped interfering with her plan to vent the lava into their national park. But sometimes when the road seems smoothest, it’s the most treacherous. Soon every path is blocked and at every turn they face another brick wall. It doesn’t take a scientist to know Fisher is behind it all. If only they knew who Fisher really was, and who was on the inside helping him.

Still, discovery of Fisher’s identity doesn’t make the work any easier. Even as he becomes a fugitive, his minions carry out his plans of sabotage and destruction. With every inch drilled closer to the lava, thousands of Fisher’s sacrificial lambs fill the park, hoping their bodies will guilt the government into stopping the project. Despite what Fisher and his minions think, though, a bigger portion of the populous is at stake. Thousands may die if Myke’s plan succeeds; hundreds of thousands will die if it doesn’t.

:The last three paragraphs are all about the ending, so I don't want to put those here. Sorry.:
-----------------------------

It ended up at about a page and a half - or 757 words. Still short of the three pages the publishers asks for, but I'm hoping less is more. This sucker is still pretty rough, but I think I'm closer than I've been in the past incarnations of the synopsis. Feel free to comment as you like. Let me know if anything is unclear, or if I've made any gross errors up there anywhere. Any help you can provide is greatly appreciated.

(ETA: I accidentally left a plot spoiler in there. It is now snipped, but I apologize to anyone who read it. I shall now go immolate myself.)