Wandering through a Random House with Grant and them

As I wander along on the path of the King of the night

I look to my left, with nothing there and so I look to my right.

Oh my, oh my, do you see what I see?

It is a Random House with a tree.

At first I sought a penguin, because I think they are cool,

But this Random House, has a grill and a big ass pool.

 

Yeah I did it, I made a poem.  Nothing cutting edge, but it did make me smile and giggle as I wrote it.  Alright so I have been tasked in my ongoing misadventures of trying to discover my inner writer, to find a publishing house that I might consider a good fit for me.  Besides I couldn't choose Little Brown and Company.  They went against my ethics.

 

Truth is that I am fearful of most publishers simply because I do not want to change the nature or the makeup of my story.  I want to keep my diversity of people, cultures, and beings.  I do not want to change my world just because someone says it will sell better if I make my genre a little more traditional.

But I looked through a list of Publishers, and I couldn’t decide.  So I picked an author who interested me in the fact that not only did he write a little non-traditional genres, but he kind of set the model for things that are now considered traditional.  Stephen King was my choice in who I would follow to make my decision.

In truth I might have said no to this one, but I thought that maybe, if I chose someone big, and if I got lucky, I might be able to do something for others, that I never seemed to get as a kid who wanted to read.  I wanted to give them a hero who was not a traditional cookie cutter type.  Not the asshole anti-hero type, but a character who was like them in some way. 

Random house is huge, and get to a large audience, so my heroes could have a large stage to prance around on, and show the world that the mold for the hero does not require a magic formula of how they should be, but the formula of how people can look at them and their struggles.

I write what my mind tells me and I say what my heart says to say. I spent so much time trying to find a place to fit in in my life that I forgot at times what it meant to be me.  I know not the comical ending to the post that you might expect but it is the truth.  I wrote a world of many different cultures, ethnicities, genders and even races.  Not everyone is human in my world, nor are all the humans the good guys by default, nor are they all evil by their human nature.  Checks and Balances like the government are what I threw in.

So if I had a book published, I would want it on a big scale, so that everyone could find a character to love and say, you know that character is my hero! He/she was awesome and the world is cool.  It is big and drags me in so much so, I wished I lived in a world like that.

As I said before, I think that people should be allowed to fail or succeed based on their own merit, not because of their skin color, gender, sexual orientation, traditions, or religious practices.  I wrote characters in the story who are from all walks of life, and threw in what I thought to be some interesting twists that causes them to asks uncomfortable questions of themselves.

For my dream cast of characters, I want a big stage.  I think that Random house could be that stage, but then again I might be happy with something small like Donald M. Grant Publisher, who is a smaller company, but also has Stephen King as a writer in their ranks.  They Published the Dark Tower Series, which is an alternate look at a world of science fiction, and fantasy with some spaghetti western thrown in there.

I wrote a world that will not completely fit into any genre all on its own, but I hope that one day I can watch it either succeed as a change of the normal pace or genres.  Right now I am just dreaming and the world of being a successful writer is not the closest thing on my mind at the moment.  But I know I would be quite overjoyed if I were to see my work in a hardcover print run.  I might be so happy I would stand up and slap your momma.  Because my momma was a saint, and she owned a .357 magnum hand cannon.  I don’t know your mom, so yeah, no guilt.

Agents in my sights.

Ah yes, I have recently been asked to look into literary agents that I might find interesting or feel comfortable with using.  It is kind of like asking someone to decide who will be the first to behead you or sing your praise throughout the centuries.  If you happen to be Joan of Arc, you get both.

 

Every time I have thought about this particular part of the being published process, I try to be optimistic.  I imagine that my future agent comes in from a dreadful commute to the office.  It is raining, or snowing, or whatever bad weather outside.  They sit down at their desk and see my query letter.  They take a deep sigh and, just wanting to get the pain of the day over with, they open up my first ten pages and start to read.  The angel sing, the clouds part and rainbows fill the sky.  They smile as the words flow from the pages painting a beautiful picture in my mind.

 

But then there is my realist side that imagines it going a lot more like this

Then, if they do read it, they look something like this:

I am sure that my plight has been felt by many aspiring authors.  Of courseI may be thinking a little on the dramatic side fo things(or perhapsI am underestimating the true reaction of hysterical laughing and plots of my demise).

So I guess the plan that should be taken is go with the one who best fits what you think you aare going for (or be close personal friends with Stephen King and ask him to put a good word in for you.)With that said I have chosen three agents that have me interested.  Let's see if they are itnerested in me one day.

Jennifer Jackson:

Jennifer Jackson is the VP at Donald Maass Literary Agency in NYC.  She is particularly fond of Science Fiction and Fantasy pieces and one of her clients is Jim Butcher, the author of the Dresden Files.  Since she started working as DMLA she has workedto build the company and spread their interest into other genres of literature.  She seems like a good fit because it sounds like she is an open minded agent who likes to see more than the typical story roll across her desk.

Russell Galen:

Russell Galen of Scovil, Galen, and Ghosh Literary Agency is my second choice.  In his write up he mentioned that he enjoys reading Fantasy stories that take him to places he can't get to via a car, and I kind of feel like this is the way I like to right.  He represents Terry Goodkind and Mercedes Lackey, two authors who write in the genre I currently and interested in.  He has 37years of experience and he apparently likes to represent his clients for a good long time.

Eddie Schneider

Finally Eddie Schneider of Awful Agents.  Okay to be honest, this guy fits my style like a glove.  He seems very passionate about Sci-Fi and Fantasy books, as well as non-fiction science, which by the way, is my bag also.  He also stated that he is willing to fight for an author who wishes to keep their stories true to their visions and takes a stand against those authors who have been discrimnated against based on their sex, ethnicity or political views.  In truth I am sometimes worried about the so called "white washing" of my characters as I believe in a world filled with many people of different origins, ethnicities, sexes and race.  If I write something I want to be put in the book section I wrote it for.

Okay, so there is my stance on agents.  To be honest, I really wouldlike for people to wander by, see my book, pick it up on a whim and read it and put it down and say, "That was a good story."  Money is not my biggest thought when I write something.  It being a good story is however.

From the one who meanders through life trying to find his way, I am out.

Wandering Revisions

Revisions, hmmm... I could say that they are like the a never ending buffet, you try as many as you can, hoping that the next one is better, but ultimately you have to settle for one thing that suits your pallete.  I was once told that you could revise something until the end of days and still find something you could have done better.

When I write I throw everything I want to see in my mental image into a scene, and I look at the conglomeration that is sitting before me and I try to make it all make sense.  That sometimes doesn't happen.  Oh hell it doesn't happen a lot.

I forget a word here or there, because I said it either, in my head or out load, which is good enough right?  Well fortunately, people aren't mind readers, but unfortunately that means that without those words, the key to the sentence stays hidden and the meaning of it locked away.

When someone tells me that they have a problem with something I've written, I try to listen and hear what they have to say and take it into account, when I re-write something.  I pull out all my peer reviews and give them a quick once over.  If I find a pattern to which they all had a problem wrapping their heads around, then that is something that I definitely need to look at, otherwise...

Well probably not the ass stomping part.  Pretty harsh response for having an opinion, although I have heard of worse happening.  Anyway back to my wandering revisions.  My line edits, well let me just say that I am not the best person of doing a  lot of proofreading before I submit something, so yeah, things slip by.  No worries though, I am sure that I will either see it or be told about it later on.  Usually I feel like a fuqtard when see or am told about my typos/errors.

So my routine is usually put on some of my music, listen to the songs I feel best inspire me for what it is I writing and have at it.  I do try to write so that everyone can keep up with what is going on.

My experience with the peer review was fun and it did help me realize that I needed to improve on somethings, as to make them a bit more clear.

Book of the Tube of You

Youtube, the video frontier; this is the voyage of one man completing a Creative Writing assignment.  My mission:  To sort through the endless number of booktubers and determine in my opinion which dos not suck.

So as I begin my voyage, my meandering drive stalls and I procrastinate, with a cold bug nipping at my hind quarters and my mind set on Calculating derivatives, I felt little to no energy to devote to watching youtube for I need all my mental capacities to fend off the sniffles and the Calculus blues.

That was until I was faced with my arch nemesis: TIME!!!! 

Seriously though, I have to admit, this was not something I would normally be a big fan of.  I enjoy hearing others opinions but I usually can gauge from conversations about this that and nothing of what we might have in common.  Such as someone telling me that they like Twilight.  I can tell that we are not going to have too much in common when it comes to what we are going to read.

Call me strange, but for the most part I stopped reading young adult stuff when I was 14.  Guess what?  Booktubers love it.  I imagine that some might even marry their favorites novels.  Let this be a story about a shy young woman and some guy with a faux hawk and an eating disorder and apparently the legs of their imagination spread like some love starve harlot in a Super 8 motel.

Now before you get too terribly offended, let me say this: I am merely posting my opinion on the matter, I am hardly an authority on anything of the sorts and those who are writing these books have vivid imagination, a thought for young love, and a less jaded romance life than me.  I am more of a fan of body counts versus romance (sex) counts.  Yes I am speaking ill of the character Anita Blake (seriously is one of her powers the ability to avoid STD’s whilst engaging in numerous orgies in one night?), she just don’t love herself.

Also if I am to be completely clear and honest I feel this way about many books from different genres, but the first three Booktubers I watched told me about their young adult romance picks of the year.  Now call it the lack of oxygen getting to my brain, or the numbers that ain’t numbers running through my head, but somewhere it flipped the switch of oh dear god.

With a clearer mind now I say, enjoy what you enjoy, and be damned the grumpy guy who reads the art of war because it seems like a reasonable life strategy. Oh yeah whilst I am in a mood of oh dear god why, for those who actually read the Simarillion and enjoyed it, HOW?  Reading the Simarillion to me is like sky diving without a parachute to save a life; a daring and noble cause but ends up being a damn tragedy in the end.

Ah but I digress, onward back to the meander drive, wander factor four.  Fourth Booktuber; Danny “I’m a Smartass” Marks.  The first thing I watched from him was him vandalizing his own young adult novel.  In my mind I said, “Wil, this guy’s got some potential.  He just drilled a hole through his book and is painting it black.”  This man also referred to himself as a whore.  I laughed, I laughed a lot.  I had finally put my imagination out on the corner.

His book shelf tour was a tour of his shelf he labeled adult that he was promising to read for the New Year.  He had a lot horror books in his 24 book promise and some science fiction along with detective stories.  I heard a bell chime in the distance as an angel got its wings, or maybe it was the music I was listening to.

He never really mentioned any of his favorite characters, but he was quite prolific about his favorite book covers and book covers that he just didn’t like at all.  I think he has a thing against the color pink.  As far as wrap-ups went I didn’t come across those but he does do something call his weekly agenda which is basically ever two or three days he announces an agenda and he tells you of what books he plans to read and things he thinks about doing in the week.

 Didn’t note any book clubs he was a part of but then again I didn’t watch all of his videos either, but that seems hardly the point really.  What I enjoy is his ability to tell why he enjoys the books he does and make fun of himself and things that go with it.  I feel like that if you enjoy something then you can find a way to make yourself laugh at your own obsession.

There is not big productions to his videos, he has semi-neat book shelves behind him seems to really enjoy what he is doing.  However I have noticed that with a lot of the booktubers, they do these jumpy edits in their videos, that go on directly to the next topic without a transition or a lead in.  this is only slightly distracting to me, but I can deal.

Most booktubers seem to be about their hauls.  Their weekly book splurges that they intend to read, but as Danny Marks says he buys a lot of books and only reads some of them.  They are also big on waiting for their favorite authors to release books and how they look forward to seeing their favorite books be made into movies.  No harm in that I think.  Hey when they first said there was going to be a Lord of the Rings franchise in live action, I was more than a little happy.

Personally I don’t think I could be a booktuber.  There is that whole thing of time; I just sometimes don’t feel like I have a lot of it.  Then there comes the reviewing of books.  It is easy to tell my friends that I wouldn’t read something and exactly why and give it some choice comparisons with cleaning parts of a bulls anatomy with it, but to tell that to a few hundred or thousands of people that book sucks and why.  That is a level of truth that I feel like should not be served on a global scale.

All and all I think there is a general need for folks who do this sort of thing.  If you find someone who reads a lot of the same books as you then you are going to tend to gravity towards the books they read if they tell you that they are good books to read.  And sometimes a little push towards something you may not have heard of or may not have tried might deliver you to a new level of enjoyment.

Meandering Minds Want to Read

Goodreads.com and Shelfari.com; two websites with pretty much the same function and effect.  I kind of wished I had known about these two sites sooner, as I might have been able to avoid some books that made me toss the damn things across the room in a fit of rage and the burning question as to why did I pick up these intolerable pieces of flaming horse excrement in the first place.

Signing up wasn’t a terrible chore, just that sometimes it felt like it was going to take forever to get information on my friends who use Good Read.  Shelfari on the other hand went really quick, but seeing as how they are supported by Amazon, I am certain their tech staff and servers are a bit larger.

Currently at the pitiful hour in the morning there are 275 people requesting the book “Nellcott My Darling.” by Golda Fried; my current creative writing professor.  I am currently a member of mostly science fiction groups, because hey I am an engineering major and I really science and I enjoy sometimes poking holes in some stories, not always mind you, but there are those days when a mean spirited rant of how a 200 foot tall robot with a fox head man by British space marines just needs a proper jeering.  But mostly I like things that go big badda boom, and planet destroying space ships make a pretty nice size explosion. BOOM heh heh.

When I start naming shelves I might go with something like the Boom Factor, Pointy Things in major organs, because I was told it was good, I enjoy the torture of myself, Elves Must DIE!, And the big green thing eats your face, Too long, or Poetry: a moment of weakness, guilt, and pleasure.

I have to say I would definitely recommend this to friends, family, and the occasional acquaintance.  It is a good way to share what you enjoy reading, get ideas of what to read next and to delve into something you might not otherwise read.

The Measure of a Description

It can be measured but never truly understood, it is an enigma that has plagued humankind and driven some to simply accept it without question.  Its measure is boundless, yet it is appearance seems small.  It is felt but never seen, although we see it work all the time both in spectacular functions and in minor apparitions of itself. 

Many have sought to oppose it and yet it holds all things prisoner, including time.    It allows us to do great things, but always keeps us in its grace.  It is a prison without walls, yet it nurtures us.  Without it we would have no food to eat, no water to drink and no air to breath.  It gives us games to play, ideas to accomplish and many sleepless hours of discomfort.

We all feel it, every year, every month, every week, every day, every hour, every minute and every second, even in our deaths.  It warps our perceptions of all things we encounter.  It is so weak that a leaf can deny it for a time, yet it pulls down mountains and buildings in it grasp.  It is the measure of the severity of situation but its weight can be lifted.  It always works and never takes time off, without it we would surely die, but its efforts will be the undoing of all life as we know it.

Wandering Around the Workshop

While this is not my first workshop, it has been quite a long time since the last one I had been involved with. So let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed partaking in it.  It was a fun process and by following it, it actually offered me ideas of what I might be able to do better.

I often find that when most people think of a critique that associate it with the idea of ripping someone’s work apart making fun of mistakes and generally writing a scathing review or there is the lofty praise comparing a work to some other persons work that has won the affections of the person doing the critique.  If any of them had the chance to sit in on a true workshop critique then I think that there would be a very different opinion on the matter.

I believe that requiring a solution to every point you made in the story was a great idea.  I think is pretty easy for someone to say that you can do something better, but justifying how it could be done better is definitely a good point.  It also allows the writer to hear ideas that they may not have thought of.  I personally have a problem with thinking it out in my head and then realizing that because I said it in my head that I did not say it in my own writing.

The atmosphere of the workshop was relaxed, and that helps when you are on the receiving end of a critique.  When you are not on the defensive you do tend to be more open to advice, or at least that has been my experience.

I am kind of looking forward to my peer review; I am interested to see what people thought of my work and what they could suggest to offer my story a more character and depth.