INTRODUCING LITSNACK

Just for fun, I have recently founded a new on-line literary magazine entitled LITSNACK (Please see link at right). The literary magazine/blog is intended to be an in between meal treat for people who want a little taste of literature without ruining their dinner.

I am currently accepting short poetry (1-35 lines) and microfiction (50-500 words). Please send submissions to dantricarico@yahoo.com. I would prefer if you embedded the submission in the body of the e-mail, please, as attachments worry me!

I am partial to new writers who would like a credit for that important bio they will need later, but would certainly hope to receive only quality work, as even though the magazine is new, not everything will be accepted.

I eagerly look forward to submissions.

Thank you. Keep writing.

LARA ZIELIN, CYBERMUSE

Let me tell you a little story: almost a year ago, I was working on my young adult novel Godtalk and outlining its revision and submission progress on this humble little blog I call Slave2themuse, an unassuming little document that I was positive that only three people--myself, the teacher who teaches next door to me, and well, me--okay, two people, were reading.

As it turns out, I was somewhat wrong.

The funny thing about posting things online is that you forget that it isn't called the WORLD WIDE web for nothing. In late fall I received a comment from someone in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who'd found my blog and was intrigued by the fact that our submission history was actually quite similar and invited me to check our her blog called "Road to Random House" that explored her writing progress and subsequent attempts to be published. After reading a little of her blog, I was impressed not only with what a strong writer she was, but also how laugh out loud funny she was, and so I commented back on her blog and gave her my e-mail address and invited her to share some publishing war stories.

That was when a brand new muse entered my life, cyber pen pal named Lara Zielin, who had penned (keyboarded?) a little tome entitled Donut Days that covered some similarly spiritual territory as my young adult book. Interestingly, at that particular time we were in roughly the same place: several drafts of our book completed, we were querying agents, attending conferences, and doing all we could to search for the one "yes" that would be the lucky portal into the publishing world. Lara, who fortunately for me believes strongly in networking, e-mailed me and we began an on-line correspondence, sharing and critiquing each other's query letters and first chapters. In an unparalleled act of kindness, Lara asked me to e-mail her the entire manuscript of my book and she said she would critique it. By then I knew she was legit (and not some mole from Dateline, just kidding, Lara)and that I could trust her, so I sent her the book thinking, well, this will be interesting, I'm going to find out what a complete stranger thousands of miles away thinks of my book all because of my silly little blog. As Yakov Smirnoff used to say, "What a Country."

Very quickly, a package arrived in my mailbox. It was the manuscript of my book that Lara had printed out and marked up--COVER TO COVER. As I later wrote in an e-mail to her, not only did she improve the book, her comments made me understand the kind of book Godtalk was SUPPOSED TO BE. Such an amazing gift she gave me. I've spent the past few months on revision based on her comments. And even though we have never officially met, she continues to be a source of serious support, encouragement, and wisdom.

I am indebted to her.

And because good things happen to good people, it wasn't long after Lara read and marked up my book that I received a very exciting (and excited!) e-mail from Lara: a highly reputable agent had agreed to represent her novel and after submitting it to a list of high powered editors, sold it in a matter of days to Putnam. Donut Days is due out in early 2009!!

In my small attempts to send some good karma out into the world, I want to invite whatever person who may be reading this that I am completely unaware of to click on the link to the right that will send you to Lara's website and check out her thoughts on the publishing world and to get so fired up about Donut Days that you buy a copy when it comes out.

I owe her a lot. Sending you her way is the least I can do.

THE FIRST THIRTY PAGES

Based on my recent submissions and responses, I've learned that the first thirty pages are absolutely critical. I knew that in theory, of course, from three writers conferences, nearly ten years of Writer's Digest subscriptions, a bookcase full of writing books, and Noah Lukeman's book The First Five Pages (okay, so he undercuts me by twenty-five pages, but still. . .). But I underestimated their importance and, as much work as I put into my book and as seriously as I took revision (and I did), I never REALLY did the work necessary to make my first thirty pages as polished as they could be.

Because one of the things that I learned is that it's those first thirty pages that gets a reader hooked and, at least in the case of agents, that investment leads to requests for partials, which leads to requests for fulls, which leads to, among other things, the purchasing of palatial digs just down the street from James Patterson.

But perhaps I get ahead of myself.

In any event, this summer I took those first thirty pages (which, in many cases, will be roughly the length of the requested partial, anyway) and I studied them, disected them, rewrote them, passed them around, incorporated suggestions, rewrote them again, put commas in, took commas out, wrote new scenes, shortened other ones, rearranged still other ones, deepened the characters, broadened the setting, varied the sentence structure, and in every way possible made them sing.

Then I continued on with the rest of the novel.

Page by page.

Now that summer is on the wane, the ultimate goal is to have a brand new version of Godtalk to submit in the Fall when I return to my job as a high school English teacher. I do feel the newest version is markedly improved. But I sacredly refuse to send out any more queries until I have a brand new draft--start to finish--and can proudly say my YA novel is immediately available. My guess is that should be somewhere around October.

If they liked Godtalk before, maybe this time some agent will find it irresistable.

Anyone know James Patterson's zip code?

DETAILS, DETAILS

After the crazy submission weekend in May, and thanks to the insightful comments of two fellow YA writer friends, I decided that more revision was in order. People were responding to the query, people were responding to the story, people were responding to the writing style. But no one fell in love with any of it enough to make a commitment.

That left only one or two possible problems. Either the pace was off for some reason (too fast, too slow, too jerky, something)or the architecture was the problem (i.e., the overall structure). Thanks again to my YA writer pals, I was able to identify problems with the pacing and structure, as well as problems they identified with a pesky little thing known as detail. In other words, in some areas I wasn't painting a clear, precise, or specific enough picture of what these characters were thinking, doing, interacting with. . .or what the setting specifically looks, sounds, smells, feels like. Ah, but what details add depth and precision and what details are filler, padding, and, well, just plain crap?

That's the important distinction.

And as one of my critique partners pointed out, "Knowing which details to include and which to omit is the difference between writing a book and writing a book that sells."

Smart woman.

NO MUSE IS GOOD MUSE

In the interest of efficiency, and due to some issues I was dealing with in my personal life, there was a time recently where e-mail queries were working better for me. So one Thursday night in May, I sat on our bed with our laptop and sent out seven queries.

I sent out four e-queries the first night (Thursday) and by 9:00 a.m. the next morning, I already had a request from the Kirsten Manges Literary Agency for the full manuscript (she said she enjoyed my query and would be "delighted" to consider the manuscript) and from PMA Literary and Film Management (their agency seems HUGE!), a partial (my synopsis "intrigued" them)!! The only problem was that Kirsten Manges wanted an exclusive.

The next night I sent out three queries and by Monday (which was a holiday for me, so I was off work), David Austern at Liza Dawson Agency requested the full manuscript!! Two requests for a full and one partial from seven queries. And all from NYC heavy-hitters.

I was, like, so stoked!!

So on Tuesday when I returned to work, I e-mailed Kirsten Manges and told her that I would love to send her the manuscript, but that I couldn't grant her an exclusive because I already had several partials out and one agent was already looking at the full manuscript (Serendipity Literary Agency in Brooklyn). I told her that, depending on her preferences, I could send her the manuscript anyway, or wait until all the responses were in and then grant her an exclusive. She e-mailed back and said what if I e-mailed her the first three chapters on a non-exclusive and then if the manuscript became available at a later date, she would be glad to look at it then. In that message she said my original query was "wonderful."

I was walking on clouds, I tell you.

So I e-mailed her the first three chapters and my synopsis. I also e-mailed David Austern a copy of the full and several hours later, he e-mailed back and said that he "didn't fall enough in love with the characters to be (the book's) most ideal champion," but that I was "a good writer" and that he'd "be interested in looking at my future projects." 45 minutes later Kirsten Manges e-mails back and says that she read the pages over lunch and was sorry to say that she "wasn't the right person for this project."

A month or so later, PMA also passed with some nice words of encouragement. By the way, Jenny Bent and Rachel Vater also passed in the last few months in a very kind and encouraging way.

In true “writing life” submission style, all of the requests—both full and partial--were eventually rejected, but the key here is that each person had something extremely positive to say about what I had going on, whether it be about the query, the synopsis, or the writing style itself.

I'm not there yet, but some of the heavy hitters were telling me that I'm doing something right and, for now, that's enough to hang my hat on (not literally; I was speaking figuratively, whatever that means. . .)

More later. . .

NEW YEAR'S UPDATE

Here are some random updates:


* Susan Schulman--agent of Louis Sachar's Holes--passed on Godtalk, but said that that she liked it and that "there was much to recommend it." I took that as a good sign.

* Due to job responsibilites at work and health issues at home, I have not been able to pursue much writing in the last few months--either on Godtalk, School Spirit, or this blog.

* Nevetheless, two days ago I decided to at least send out a query or two on Godtalk, just to say I was doing SOMETHING to pursue the goal. So I sent two e-mail queries to Rachel Vater at Lowenstein-Yost and Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group, both heavy hitters in the industry.

* The VERY NEXT DAY, I received an e-mail from Jenny Bent's assistant asking for an author bio, synopsis, and three sample chapters.


HAPPY NEW YEAR!s

SECOND FLASH

While perusing some of the flash fiction on-line magazines, I recently checked out the current issue of insolent rudder to see what these folks have going on, as I have usually enjoyed the stories they've served up in the past couple issues, not to mention the fact that, over the summer, I submitted a story to them.

When the site loaded and I was scanning the contents, my subconscious pimpslapped me a nano-second before my concscious caught up: "Hey," my subconscious said, cuffing me in the noggin', "you know that title."

Then my conscious caught up: "Hell," it said, "you wrote that story!"

Sure enough, insolent rudder had accepted my story,published it in Fall 2006 issue of their magazine and, for whatever reason, I never was notified of said acceptance.

I'm not complaining, however. It looks great, I like the story, and the graphic seems to have been designed especially for the story and doesn't appear to be some stock photo they just laid in next to my words. Very cool.

The name of the story is "The Things I've Lost" and concerns how a fifty-two year old man commits one act of infidelity and ruins his marriage, his family, and his life--all in less than seven hundred words.

If anyone ever reads this cyberspace vaccuum I call a 'blog, please check out the story (or Lockdown in the April 2006 issue of rumble) and let me know what you think.

I mean it: Put down that coffee and donut, dammit, and do it now! Then come back here and leave something in the damn comments section. And no, I don't really care that this is the first post in three months. Just do it!

THE YING/YANG PRINCIPLE

YING

Susan Schulman, literary agent of Louis Sachar who wrote the YA phenomenon Holes, asked to see the full manuscript of Godtalk. Wow. I almost couldn't breathe. At the bottom of my query letter, she handwrote "send the full ms in September." Apparently she has her hands full right now.


YANG

In June, Sara Crowe, of Harvey Klinger Literary Management, asked me to e-mail her the full manuscript of Godtalk, which I did on June 23, 2006. Yesterday I received a very nice e-mail response from her saying that she was "torn" because she liked the idea and my writing was good, but that she wasn't enthusiastic enough about the project to take it on; primarily, she said, in an effort to keep her client list small and manageable. I was so stoked, though, that she even was "torn," as she said. A big-time NY agent was thinking about actually representing my book and (maybe) almost said, "yes."

It's a new step for me.


MORAL OF THE STORY:

Over the course of the two and a half years I was pimping it through the mail, three agents asked to see Bad Moon Rising, none of them in New York (not that an agent HAS to be in NY, but it doesn't hurt!). Charlotte Gusay, who is now not recommended by P&E because she charges fees; Appleseeds Management, who is in Northern California, and who I think is a "boutique" agency, to put it kindly; and The Nancy Ellis Agency, who was censured for hording her clients' advances.

However, in the six months of sending out Godtalk, three agents have asked to see the full manuscript--all of them in New York! One that I met at the writers conference (Serendipity, although they've had the manuscript for over three months), Sara Crowe (mentioned above), and now Susan Schulman, who reps one of the most successful YA novels in recent history. People seem to be responding to something in this premise/story/novel.

All in six months.

Steps forward/Steps backward/Steps forward.

Ying/Yang.