Raccciman’s World

“Frozen Witness” has arrived in the editor's inbox and I'm supposed to hear back in about a month.
“Velvet Lies” is in the mail. (Thank you, Zeborah, for your comments, they were a big help!)

And, I have 11 out of 19 Chapters worth of fixes done for _Talking With Winds_, which I'm hoping to get into the mail next week. Although, I keep *reading* it instead of fixing it. (I just get this huge kick out of Asond going around insulting everyone. I'm sure this means I suffer from some serious character flaws, but I can't help it.)

I'm not a baseball fan. Did I get that right? Is the bull pen where the pitcher warms up?

Because I, having recently read 's post on pitching to editors, have been practicing my pitches.

Practice Pitch for Harp & Gyre

My novel, Harp & Gyre is a completed high fantasy Juvenile of about 50 000 words, told in tight 3rd person from the viewpoint of the protagonist. Allma, apprentice bard, was convinced that his future as a keeper of history and advisor to kings was assured, but his unwary tongue and his mischievous pranks have finally become too much for his master, Lord Bectus. Bectus has been called away to try stop an impending war, and he regretfully decides to leave Allma behind. Allma can't bear to lose the respect and good will of his teacher, so he steals away after him, determined to prove himself worthy of song and story. His self-assigned diplomatic mission to find allies for the shortly to be besieged city of Ilam is less than successful, and in the end Allma finds that his only option is to speak to the invaders in person. But will his youthful earnestness and silver tongue be enough to save an entire kingdom from destruction? Maybe not. Fortunately along the way he's made friends with a young elf enchantress, some telepathic unicorns, acquired a pair of magical dice, and learned that sometimes you just have to do what needs to be done.

My name is Michelle Bottorff, and I wrote this book because it was the type of book I loved reading as a child and, well, I still love reading this kind of book. I think its cool when a total underdog, like a little kid, manages to plausibly accomplish something that all the big important people can't manage to do, and I love going somewhere that doesn't exist and seeing things that could never be. I have six kids and they all love fantasy, and after I practically forced them to read this book they confessed that they wouldn't be ashamed to admit in public that they were related to its author. I have sold a children's short story and a rpg article at professional rates, and I also write fantasy and science fiction for older readers. If this book is of any interest to you I have a sequel practically finished. As for my expectation for a writing career, well, I have written stories since I was twelve and I will continue to write until the day I die, and I figure if I'm going to do all that work anyway, I might as well get paid. I'm hoping my training in drama and public speaking will serve me well when the time comes to do marketing and promotion.

Practice Pitch for Cantata in Coral and Ivory

My novel Cantata in Coral and Ivory, is a completed fantasy comedy of manners of about 126 000 words. It is narrated in first person by the personal scribe of the protagonist. This scribe is in some ways an unreliable narrator, because, although he desperately wants to tell the true story of what happened, it is forbidden for him to say anything that might be considered derogatory about his master… and his master is a gruff sea-captain, with the build of a professional wrestler and a sailors' vocabulary who has just unexpectedly come into the family title and is now required to take up residence at court. Lord Ikhsior wants nothing better than to get out of there, but the longer he stays at court, the more he becomes entangled in its affairs. A lady-in-waiting offers him a gift he cannot refuse, but will he need to pay a price he cannot afford? Can he face down the snide and sophisticated Lord Lare, explain the meaning behind the mysterious disappearing rock man, orchestrate a court sight-seeing expedition, manage his estates, maintain his family honor, and find true love, all while conjuring up songs appropriate to every occasion at the drop of a lady's hairpin? Well, he can, but will the court ever recover from the resulting havoc? And can he survive the Emperor's resulting wrath?

My name is Michelle Bottorff, and I wrote this book to combine three of my greatest loves in literature. The first is my obsession with romance, the second is the invention/discovery of a strange and exotic new places and cultures, and the third is the wry, tongue-in-cheek sort of humor found in Jane Austin, Oscar Wilde and Georgette Heyer. I have written stories since I was twelve and have sold a children's short story and a rpg article at professional rates, as well as winning a few negligible writing contests and challenges. I have many stories to tell and I'm more interested in building a long term career than I am in making a splash, but I understand the need for promotion, so I've taken a course in internet marketing, and hopefully my training in drama and public speaking will also prove useful when the time comes.

No, I don't feel well enough to write yet, but I figured that didn't need to stop me from getting other writing related type tasks done. I mean, if I am well enough to work for my Dad, I must be well enough to work for *myself*, right?

So I have submitted “Dark Moon Light” to Baen's “Universe Slush” where it is getting trashed by the barflies.

And I have updated my writing website, most particularly the Stories page where I have put up teasers for:
Harp & Gyre
Cantata in Coral and Ivory
Dark Moon Light

(And I put up a verson of Great Great Grampa and the Chinook on the website itself so that you no longer have to link over to Renderosity to read it, and so I could actually do some line edits to it.)

I also changed my projected writing schedule dates to reflect my current situation. (Booo! Hisss!)

Dark Moon Light came back. *Lovely* rejection letter: It said my story made it right up to the final round, listed the things that swayed the final decision in the other guy's favor so I can improve it, declared “you have a real flare for action and character, a rare combination”, and added that I was to please submit again and send it to the editor personally, not to the regular slush.

If I wrote more shorts it would be nicer. Lovely rejection letters still aren't sales. I can't use them as publication credits, and they won't help get my novels looked at.

Okay now I'm depressed. (I was already trying to deal with all my usual angst and the fact that the brother of one of our friends committed suicide yesterday.) Would putting some of these “lovely” comments I get from critters and editors up on a “blurb” page on my website be too tacky for words?

I spent over 3 hours yesterday reading the first third of Winds to Ben (my fourteen year old), because reading it aloud is such a good way to notice certain kinds of problems, even if it is a bit rough on the vocal chords. Afterwards I made an utter pest of myself by wandering around the house quoting my favorite bits at people. I think it's supposed to be uncool to like your own writing, but I can't help it. I *like* this story. I *like* Cantata… I like them all. That's why I went to all the work of writing them down, right?

Well, yesterday I tore chapter two of Winds apart and put it back together again using a bunch of the bits that I had removed from chapter one. That was… interesting. The fact that the structure of the book is chapters divided into fairly equal halves, with the first half being her viewpoint and the second half being his, doesn't help. (No, that's not hers and his in a romantic sense.) The stuff that got removed from the end of chapter one had to be time shifted so that it could go into the middle of chapter two, and the stuff that was at the beginning of chapter two had to be either time shifted backward, rewritten into the other viewpoint, or dumped. But chapter two now contains plot moving stuff, and since it didn't really have any before, that's got to be a step in the right direction.

Today I moved on to my next trouble spot, about a third of the way through the book, and added an incident that didn't previously exist. I removed a character interaction that I rather liked in order to do so, but it wasn't necessary, and it didn't *fit* any more. Mostly because, once again, the structure of the book required that I flip some stuff from one viewpoint to the other — which is actually kind of fun to see. Although the narrative voice remains fairly constant, stuff still changes just because of who we are seeing it through.

I now no longer have any large fixes that I know about, and after I run through my critter's comments to catch the small stuff, I'll have nothing more to do on it until someone else reads it. If my Dad hasn't called me up to tell me what I'm supposed to be doing for him by then, I'm going to be in a bit of a quandry. I don't want to get involved in another rough draft of something only to get pulled away from it before it's gotten properly started, that would be totally frustrating. On the other hand, I don't want to sit around and twiddle my thumbs either.

I've not been writing so I would have time/energy to help my dad with his new business, but at the moment he doesn't seem to sure about what he wants me to be doing, so Boyd convinced me I should do some writing after all.

Monday I sent a query out, and today I revised Chapter 1 of Talking With Winds. Chopped it down to the size it should be, and everything. 🙂
Yay!
Of course, now chapter two makes no sense whatsoever, but that's how progress works sometimes.

Jasmine read my book in manuscript form and was honored to have the opportunity.

Her sister Azure, however, couldn't be bothered. After all, it was written by her Mom, how good could it be? Worse, all those bothersome loose pages. But I entered my Harp & Gyre in the Xerox/lelu aspiring author's contest, so now I have a bound copy on hand, and Azure finally condescended to read it.

She read it all in a day. Hardly putting it down. But when her father faced her with it, she seems really reluctant to admit that she actually ::gasp!:: *liked* it.

At Marcon I did a koffeklatch, (or whatever they are called) with Steve Staffel, from Del Rey. It was very, very fun getting to see an editor enthuse over all his current projects and go on about how good his writers were, and how excited he was about this book, and how excited he was about that other book and so forth.

I want one of those on my side.

Although, it probably won't Steve Staffel, I don't think my writing and his tastes would mesh that closely. But there must be one who likes the sort of stuff I write out there *somewhere*. I just have to find them.

And then as soon as I get home from Marcon I see a notice about Xerox doing a contest as a promotional thing. It's to promote their self-publishing/publish on demand, technology. I'm not really interested in self publishing, I don't think. But it didn't cost anything to enter except the time it took to “publish” my book, and for that, I get a free perfect bound (soft cover) copy of the book. I entered Harp & Gyre. I didn't dare take as much time as I wanted on the cover picture, because it looked like they were only accepting the first thousand books, and I didn't know how far along they were. But I did have the files available from the smaller picture I made for my webpage, so I think the finished cover looks pretty darned good for a rush job.

I found a dress I thought would work for the Seductress.
It's for a figure I don't have, but I mostly made it work.