I sent six queries yesterday and it was gut-wrenching. I was so extremely paranoid and nervous there would be a mistake, I couldn't even eat dinner. By the third one, I was feeling more relaxed... by the fourth one, I was almost feeling confident. And then I noticed a HUGE error that had come through all of them as a result of copying and pasting the same paragraph to all of them.
*BLURG!!!!*
Now, each query was its own thing, but a tiny section was a copy-and-paste thing, and that was where I had listed the title of the book as "THE MISFORTUNE OF THE EMERALD CAVE."
Cave?? NO!!! Not CAVE!!!!!
The book's title is, "THE MISFORTUNE OF THE EMERALD THIEF!"
The SERIES is called, "THE KEEPERS OF THE EMERALD CAVE."
Oy.
The reason is simple... I called this book "Emerald Cave" for so long, it's been burned into my brain. So as I was reading and rereading and reading yet again the queries last night, I did not even notice the wrong word in the title.
I caught it on the fourth one, but after I'd sent it, so I sent a follow-up note letting him know I'd flipped the word in the title and why it was easy for me to do that.
So there you have it. I'm human. C'est la vie!!!
:-)
Peace,
Cynthia
Friday, February 24, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
The querying has begun!
It's true. I have ripped through THE MISFORTUNE OF THE EMERALD THIEF for the last time (as of today) and am tossing this bad boy out into the world to see if it will sink or swim.
I sure hope the knots in my belly go away someday.
Peace,
And send Tums,
Cynthia
I sure hope the knots in my belly go away someday.
Peace,
And send Tums,
Cynthia
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
The Emerald Cave has its own website!
It's done and I love it! I always see a little thing to tweak, but here it is in all its magical glory:
www.wix.com/CLMoyer/EmeraldCaveSeries
www.wix.com/CLMoyer/EmeraldCaveSeries
I have not purchased a domain yet through Wix, though. It's only $50 a year, so I will probably set that up soon, even if just to lock down the domain name I want for the series.
The background for the website is amazing, and it's one Wix already had in their choices, so a few days ago I went back in to finish the design. I had to have a kitty, and we even found an owl who flaps its gorgeous wings -- Mary Pearl LOVES owls -- and lots of sparkles and of course, bubbles. It rocks.
:-)
:-)
Someday I want to have a fancy site like Rick Riordan has for his books, but I'll get there.
Peace,
Cynthia
Monday, February 6, 2012
Another website?
My latest project this weekend has been working on a website just for the Emerald Cave series, and I am totally digging it. It's not finished yet, so it's not yet been published for viewing. I'm using Wix, which on one hand has so many options my head is spinning, but on the other hand doesn't have some features I would think would be standard for any web-building site. But that's what has been keeping me up late this week. That and an endless supply of British miniseries on Netflix streaming.
Spring has sprung here in Western Washington. We are up to our fleece-covered elbows in 59-degree weather and it's almost 4:30 in the afternoon. We came home from an errand after school today and flung open all of the windows to air out the house. I predict we have about 30 minutes before the temperature drops into the 40s and we have to hurry and shut them all and build the biggest fire in the world in the fireplace.
My really exciting news (to me) is that I have a real, live kid reading my Misfortune of the Emerald Thief manuscript, and his mom has reported he's really into it! YEAH! I am tightening the ms page by page, and finalizing my query/synopsis/etc. I feel like it's never really done or ready. I know I'll send it to ten agents, then change something before I send it to the next ten. But that's the way it goes. As long as I keep sending it until something happens.
Reading Jill Corcoran on Twitter this morning during #AgentDay reinforced my plan to make it read as fast as possible with a minimum of chatter. She woke up to an inbox full of queries and she admitted she doesn't get to it as often as she used to since she separated her incoming queries from her regular email with a new address, and that's totally fine. I can imagine doing the exact same thing if I were an agent, and I imagine it's like that for most agents. That stack of queries first thing in the morning would look like Mt. Kilimanjaro to me, too, especially after being up late watching yet another late night of streaming Downton Abbey.
So short and sweet is the key. Short and sweet is the key. Short and sweet is the key.
And I think I will get better feedback and response from agents who appreciate the short and sweet approach.
We will see!
Peace
Spring has sprung here in Western Washington. We are up to our fleece-covered elbows in 59-degree weather and it's almost 4:30 in the afternoon. We came home from an errand after school today and flung open all of the windows to air out the house. I predict we have about 30 minutes before the temperature drops into the 40s and we have to hurry and shut them all and build the biggest fire in the world in the fireplace.
My really exciting news (to me) is that I have a real, live kid reading my Misfortune of the Emerald Thief manuscript, and his mom has reported he's really into it! YEAH! I am tightening the ms page by page, and finalizing my query/synopsis/etc. I feel like it's never really done or ready. I know I'll send it to ten agents, then change something before I send it to the next ten. But that's the way it goes. As long as I keep sending it until something happens.
Reading Jill Corcoran on Twitter this morning during #AgentDay reinforced my plan to make it read as fast as possible with a minimum of chatter. She woke up to an inbox full of queries and she admitted she doesn't get to it as often as she used to since she separated her incoming queries from her regular email with a new address, and that's totally fine. I can imagine doing the exact same thing if I were an agent, and I imagine it's like that for most agents. That stack of queries first thing in the morning would look like Mt. Kilimanjaro to me, too, especially after being up late watching yet another late night of streaming Downton Abbey.
So short and sweet is the key. Short and sweet is the key. Short and sweet is the key.
And I think I will get better feedback and response from agents who appreciate the short and sweet approach.
We will see!
Peace
Friday, February 3, 2012
Filling the balloon
My major revisions are complete on The Misfortune of the Emerald Thief, and it has been sent to many, many people who are hopefully reading through it now. It's always fun to get feedback on my story, but this time I'm not waiting around doing nothing. I have a huge to-do list, and so I'm knocking things off of it one by one.
First, I started running through Query Tracker and compiling my list of agents I want to target with my query. I love that there are so many out there, but it's still a matter of finding one who digs my project. That underway, I made a list of what each wanted to see when it came time to query. This means I need a stellar query, an author's bio, a one-paragraph summary of my novel, as well as a longer synopsis, and then various lengths of writing from the novel itself.
The first query I'd written was sliced and diced by three others and myself, and the result a lean, mean fighting machine, but last night I went in to see if I could pull of writing the entire query in Denim's voice. I really like how it turned out, so now I am wary about which one to send. So I will let them both sit and I will work on the short synopsis and the long -- the short one will be the hardest, I think! Smashing your story down into a few hundred words or less? It's like somebody comes to your house and says, "Here's an elephant and a shoe box... figure out how to get this thing in there..."
But my main goal this week is to fill the balloon.
"Filling the balloon" is something I thought of this past weekend. I was imagining my story, running through the various scenes and acts in my head, wondering if this piece could use some more description, or that one more dialog. I realized the story is the balloon, and now I'm just seeing how much more air I need to make it nice and full and satisfying. Nobody wants a flattish balloon, but nobody wants one that is so full it pops when it hits the slightly textured ceiling, so like with all things, it's a balance.
My balloon is just about perfect, which tells me it's really time to query this sucker and see if it will fly. I have two major plot details I want to go over, and as other readers get back to me, I will consider their thoughts as well.
One interesting thing I've noticed is, since the beginning of this year, I've been eating better, I stopped drinking coffee, and I pulled my 6-year-old out of school to homeschool, yet I've produced my most work on a regular, daily basis. I work every day on my writing, and as the days go by, the amount of time per day spent on writing goes up -- even with homeschooling Mary Pearl. I go to bed thinking about my writing, and wake up ready to go. It makes no sense. Or maybe it does. I really want to get back to writing Book 2 of the Keepers of the Emerald Cave Series: The Curse of the Paisley Clan, and that is enough to keep me moving on kicking this one out the door.
Today's beautiful warm-ish weather is giving me a glimpse into what spring will be like, and so for this little break from winter, I am very grateful. Except I couldn't see anything at my writing desk until I closed the shade, which sort of defeats the purpose of this rare visit from the sun. But I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it's enough to just know the sun is out there somewhere, and I'll be taking the kids to the park after school so we can all stock up on our Vitamin D.
Peace,
Cynthia
First, I started running through Query Tracker and compiling my list of agents I want to target with my query. I love that there are so many out there, but it's still a matter of finding one who digs my project. That underway, I made a list of what each wanted to see when it came time to query. This means I need a stellar query, an author's bio, a one-paragraph summary of my novel, as well as a longer synopsis, and then various lengths of writing from the novel itself.
The first query I'd written was sliced and diced by three others and myself, and the result a lean, mean fighting machine, but last night I went in to see if I could pull of writing the entire query in Denim's voice. I really like how it turned out, so now I am wary about which one to send. So I will let them both sit and I will work on the short synopsis and the long -- the short one will be the hardest, I think! Smashing your story down into a few hundred words or less? It's like somebody comes to your house and says, "Here's an elephant and a shoe box... figure out how to get this thing in there..."
But my main goal this week is to fill the balloon.
"Filling the balloon" is something I thought of this past weekend. I was imagining my story, running through the various scenes and acts in my head, wondering if this piece could use some more description, or that one more dialog. I realized the story is the balloon, and now I'm just seeing how much more air I need to make it nice and full and satisfying. Nobody wants a flattish balloon, but nobody wants one that is so full it pops when it hits the slightly textured ceiling, so like with all things, it's a balance.
My balloon is just about perfect, which tells me it's really time to query this sucker and see if it will fly. I have two major plot details I want to go over, and as other readers get back to me, I will consider their thoughts as well.
One interesting thing I've noticed is, since the beginning of this year, I've been eating better, I stopped drinking coffee, and I pulled my 6-year-old out of school to homeschool, yet I've produced my most work on a regular, daily basis. I work every day on my writing, and as the days go by, the amount of time per day spent on writing goes up -- even with homeschooling Mary Pearl. I go to bed thinking about my writing, and wake up ready to go. It makes no sense. Or maybe it does. I really want to get back to writing Book 2 of the Keepers of the Emerald Cave Series: The Curse of the Paisley Clan, and that is enough to keep me moving on kicking this one out the door.
Today's beautiful warm-ish weather is giving me a glimpse into what spring will be like, and so for this little break from winter, I am very grateful. Except I couldn't see anything at my writing desk until I closed the shade, which sort of defeats the purpose of this rare visit from the sun. But I live in the Pacific Northwest, so it's enough to just know the sun is out there somewhere, and I'll be taking the kids to the park after school so we can all stock up on our Vitamin D.
Peace,
Cynthia
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