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Since I switched my main web site to be about writing, I've let my LJ lapse a little.
But I'm about to go into a heavy submission period with my new novel, so I'm reactiving posting here since I can create private friends-only posts. So if you want to follow, you'll need to friend me!
This is my fourth book to submit out. I have quite a few agents who have previously read my fulls and invited me to submit future work. I've picked out some more extremely good fits to send to as well.
The new book is very controversial and created some serious combustion in my critique group. A large number made comments so harsh that it took me several weeks (and a fair amount of tears) to recover. Another good section said it was an important book and not to let anyone stop me from pursuing it.
I'm expecting that the official rejections will be silent or generic, as is the norm for agents, but it will be interesting to see.
So if you're already a friend, great! If not, hop on board. It's going to be an interesting ride. It's a timely topic, so I plan to hit it very hard and fast.
- Mood:
anxious
So my first email of 2009 was a movie producer responding to a query I sent a couple days before, and asking to see the first 30 pages of my family story screenplay.
Here's hoping that the rest of the year goes just as well!
My new critique group is up and running. I'll be editing my latest work-in-progress, Heteroflexible.
Our first exercise was a get-acquainted post to the group where we summarize our novels and learn what each other is doing. The summary should help us clarify the heart of our stories.
I won't post all the exercises, but when I think they are fun or useful, they'll go on the blog. We're roughly following Donald Maass' Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook
Happy New Year, everyone!
Exercise 1
Novel Title: Heteroflexible
General Fiction—Romantic Comedy
Wise-cracking wedding photographer Zest Renald has just been served divorce papers when she is hired by a lesbian softball team to document their elopement to California. She’s never heard of Prop 8, and her only exposure to lesbian culture is an addiction to the talk show Ellen. But with her assets frozen and her husband holing up at her house with the Other Woman, she takes the job.
The brides arrive in San Diego only to discover the minister they hired is using them as target practice in his mission to save sinners from eternal damnation. After a low-speed chase across town in their pink limo, the women retreat to a Mexican restaurant while protests and counter-protests brew outside. The women call in reinforcements—members of a gay male softball team who make the ultimate sacrifice to help the women slip past the activists and tie the white knot.
First Graf:
Ordinarily, photographers do not get paid to baby-sit Bridezillas.
Last Graf:
And I kissed him, in front of God and everybody, including sixteen lesbians, five cheerleaders in drag, and a pink Pomeranian named Butch.
Saturday night I sat in a seedy bar with ten good friends. We were celebrating the end of National Novel Writing Month. At least five of us had written our 50,000 words in November, and now we were drinking hideous blue margaritas and watching drunk people throw darts (foreshadowing--an hour later we would be those drunk people hurtling sharp objects across a dark room.)
I had won a "Decision Maker" as a prize at the official party earlier in the evening. It's a modern version of the "Magic Eight Ball," a bright little object with a spinning light and six answers to your questions, such as "Abort Mission" or "Engage!" I had covered up redundant or annoying answers with more bar-appropriate suggestions, including, "Drink!" and "Kiss Someone."
As we sat around a long table, I heard a word that was new to me, and like a streak of light in the dark, I knew it was the title to my new novel.
Heteroflexible.
I had won a "Decision Maker" as a prize at the official party earlier in the evening. It's a modern version of the "Magic Eight Ball," a bright little object with a spinning light and six answers to your questions, such as "Abort Mission" or "Engage!" I had covered up redundant or annoying answers with more bar-appropriate suggestions, including, "Drink!" and "Kiss Someone."
As we sat around a long table, I heard a word that was new to me, and like a streak of light in the dark, I knew it was the title to my new novel.
Heteroflexible.
I'd never heard the word before, and even those at the table were a little indecisive on its nuances, but the core definition was pretty clear: a heterosexual who is sometimes attracted to a person of the same sex.
Reading up on the word was surprising. It was coined in 1996 but saw more common use only in 2004. Writers on both sides of the conservative/liberal fence dislike the term either because it disrupts the natural order of girls flirting with guys or because it mixes giggling hetero girls with lesbians, setting gay rights back. (Some links: http://www.startribune.com/local/2730035
I found it both comforting and inspiring to know that a pop culture term that is woefully underused, wildly controversial, and rife with conflict and stirred passion, serving as a flashpoint between generations and their view of sex, is exactly the sort of word that describes my book.
Reading up on the word was surprising. It was coined in 1996 but saw more common use only in 2004. Writers on both sides of the conservative/liberal fence dislike the term either because it disrupts the natural order of girls flirting with guys or because it mixes giggling hetero girls with lesbians, setting gay rights back. (Some links: http://www.startribune.com/local/2730035
I found it both comforting and inspiring to know that a pop culture term that is woefully underused, wildly controversial, and rife with conflict and stirred passion, serving as a flashpoint between generations and their view of sex, is exactly the sort of word that describes my book.
I'm very excited about 2009! Bring it on!
So much has happened since I began my novel. It started on a lark, an exercise in voice, humor, and expanding a comic situation to novel length.
Then came election night, and the passage of Prop 8 in California as well as similar measures in Arizona and Florida, all showing intolerance in the face of love, banning same-sex marriages as if we heteros had the lock on what constitutes commitment.
The story turned more serious, and finally I gave into it. While the situations retain their comic lilt, as I have continued to follow my humor-driven outline, I find I am not the same person who began this journey, and the novel shows it. What I thought would be light and fun has instead forced me to examine what makes love work, and wonder why any person, religion, or group thinks they could or should be the legal or moral arbiter of affairs of the heart.
In this excerpt, Zest, our main character and a professional photographer going through a divorce herself, and the four couples whose wedding she is documenting, have just left a confrontation with their minister, unable to get married. The man they hired to perform the ceremony has instead greeted them with 30 Prop 8 supporters, all hell-bent on saving them from their sinning ways.
After an argument on how to interpret the Bible where one of the women shoves the minister off his ladder and another throws her flowers in his face, the women have escaped into their limo, only to be followed by members of the minister's flock. Here they have excited their limo driver into racing across San Diego to lose the zealots.
_____________________
Chapter 15: Road Rally
Bella let out a scream as we crunched over a median, did an ungraceful 180, and sped down the road in the other direction. We all slid into each other, flowers flying, limbs askew in white silk and taffeta. I gripped my camera.
“Oh my God, this is nuts,” Jenna said. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit something.”
“Hit Mary,” Nikki said. “She got us into this.”
Mary brushed petals from her lap. “How was I supposed to know this was a set up? What kind of person says they will perform a wedding but organizes a hate rally?”
“How did you find this guy anyway?” Aud asked. “1-800-Bash-a-Queer?”
“I called the Episcopalian Diocese.”
“Never trust an Episcopalian!” Nikki said.
“I’m an Episcopalian!” Mary shouted.
“And look what happened when we trusted you!” Nikki shot back.
“I didn’t think the California Episcopalians would be wingnuts!”
“Ladies,” Bradford said. “Divided, they conquer. Let’s figure out what to do next.”
Audrey turned in her seat to peer out the back window. “Bogies at six o’clock,” she said. “They’re limo-magnets.”
“We’re not exactly hard to spot,” Nikki said.
Blitz pounded her hand on the glass. “Stupid pink limo.”
“I don’t think any limo would exactly disappear in traffic,” Jenna said.
The driver rapped on the partition. “Should I get on freeway? I can lose them.”
“Whatever works,” Bradford muttered. “I don’t want them figuring out where we’re staying.”
“You got it,” the man said. He gunned it, rapidly changing lanes to fly up the on ramp. This time we all hung on to our seats, trying to avoid smashing into each other.
“Did they make it on?” Mary asked.
“Not sure,” Audrey said. “I don’t think the black Honda did, but there was another one, something blue.”
We weaved through traffic, more than one of us probably remembering footage of a white Bronco. We gripped the cushions and door handles grimly, as if starring in our own movie, and handling our own stunts.
We passed signs for Mission Bay, the water appearing and disappearing as we raced down the highway. We were driving away from our hotel, without a destination, and I certainly had no suggestions about what to do next. I could barely process what all had just happened.
I flipped backward through the images on the LCD. The protesters chanting. The limo exit. The minister shaking his fist. The flowers smashing into his face. Mary crying. The ladder tipping. Blitz, red and angry. A blood red sign reading, “Marriage is sacred.”
Then into the past, last night—ocean water, fire rings, and a line of silhouettes, figures stretching out across the dark. Only as the scenes flashed by could I begin to process them, as though they hadn’t really happened until I lived through them this second time. I set the camera in my lap, remembering the pictures in the house of me and Cade, of my parents, and realized, suddenly, for the first time, far too late, that there weren’t any pictures of me and my husband from this last year, just sample shots in the studio, set designs, all photographs designed to help my business grow.
How much of my life did I live in the moment? How much did I only assess after the fact? I thumbed through the images, faster this time, and saw how quickly something wonderful can turn tragic, how fleeting hope can be, and that only the stalwart can muscle through difficulty without drowning in loss.
Then came election night, and the passage of Prop 8 in California as well as similar measures in Arizona and Florida, all showing intolerance in the face of love, banning same-sex marriages as if we heteros had the lock on what constitutes commitment.
The story turned more serious, and finally I gave into it. While the situations retain their comic lilt, as I have continued to follow my humor-driven outline, I find I am not the same person who began this journey, and the novel shows it. What I thought would be light and fun has instead forced me to examine what makes love work, and wonder why any person, religion, or group thinks they could or should be the legal or moral arbiter of affairs of the heart.
In this excerpt, Zest, our main character and a professional photographer going through a divorce herself, and the four couples whose wedding she is documenting, have just left a confrontation with their minister, unable to get married. The man they hired to perform the ceremony has instead greeted them with 30 Prop 8 supporters, all hell-bent on saving them from their sinning ways.
After an argument on how to interpret the Bible where one of the women shoves the minister off his ladder and another throws her flowers in his face, the women have escaped into their limo, only to be followed by members of the minister's flock. Here they have excited their limo driver into racing across San Diego to lose the zealots.
_____________________
Chapter 15: Road Rally
Bella let out a scream as we crunched over a median, did an ungraceful 180, and sped down the road in the other direction. We all slid into each other, flowers flying, limbs askew in white silk and taffeta. I gripped my camera.
“Oh my God, this is nuts,” Jenna said. “I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or hit something.”
“Hit Mary,” Nikki said. “She got us into this.”
Mary brushed petals from her lap. “How was I supposed to know this was a set up? What kind of person says they will perform a wedding but organizes a hate rally?”
“How did you find this guy anyway?” Aud asked. “1-800-Bash-a-Queer?”
“I called the Episcopalian Diocese.”
“Never trust an Episcopalian!” Nikki said.
“I’m an Episcopalian!” Mary shouted.
“And look what happened when we trusted you!” Nikki shot back.
“I didn’t think the California Episcopalians would be wingnuts!”
“Ladies,” Bradford said. “Divided, they conquer. Let’s figure out what to do next.”
Audrey turned in her seat to peer out the back window. “Bogies at six o’clock,” she said. “They’re limo-magnets.”
“We’re not exactly hard to spot,” Nikki said.
Blitz pounded her hand on the glass. “Stupid pink limo.”
“I don’t think any limo would exactly disappear in traffic,” Jenna said.
The driver rapped on the partition. “Should I get on freeway? I can lose them.”
“Whatever works,” Bradford muttered. “I don’t want them figuring out where we’re staying.”
“You got it,” the man said. He gunned it, rapidly changing lanes to fly up the on ramp. This time we all hung on to our seats, trying to avoid smashing into each other.
“Did they make it on?” Mary asked.
“Not sure,” Audrey said. “I don’t think the black Honda did, but there was another one, something blue.”
We weaved through traffic, more than one of us probably remembering footage of a white Bronco. We gripped the cushions and door handles grimly, as if starring in our own movie, and handling our own stunts.
We passed signs for Mission Bay, the water appearing and disappearing as we raced down the highway. We were driving away from our hotel, without a destination, and I certainly had no suggestions about what to do next. I could barely process what all had just happened.
I flipped backward through the images on the LCD. The protesters chanting. The limo exit. The minister shaking his fist. The flowers smashing into his face. Mary crying. The ladder tipping. Blitz, red and angry. A blood red sign reading, “Marriage is sacred.”
Then into the past, last night—ocean water, fire rings, and a line of silhouettes, figures stretching out across the dark. Only as the scenes flashed by could I begin to process them, as though they hadn’t really happened until I lived through them this second time. I set the camera in my lap, remembering the pictures in the house of me and Cade, of my parents, and realized, suddenly, for the first time, far too late, that there weren’t any pictures of me and my husband from this last year, just sample shots in the studio, set designs, all photographs designed to help my business grow.
How much of my life did I live in the moment? How much did I only assess after the fact? I thumbed through the images, faster this time, and saw how quickly something wonderful can turn tragic, how fleeting hope can be, and that only the stalwart can muscle through difficulty without drowning in loss.
