The Shadow Warriors Now Available on Amazon Germany

 Cross-post with The Shadow Warriors blog. . .

The best news yesterday.  The Shadow Warriors, set in Germany, is now available on the Amazon Kindle in Germany.  See link to the right of this post.  I am nearly beside myself, because logic would dictate that a book set in Germany (Goettingen) should be available there.  And a book set at a university might tempt university students and faculty who read English. 

Other good news this week:  The literary journal Kansas City Lights is publishing  memoir piece about my grandmother.  My grandma was proudly from Kansas.  So is my heroine, Emma.  She always stops to notice flowers and gardens.  

Sometimes the stars do seem aligned.  The lilac has flower buds.  Last year, not one, and the year before only one.  This year, it looks loaded.  A pair of cardinals in the yard, and the cute little swamp (?) sparrow has a mate.  Ducks in the slough.  My cup runneth over.  Spring in New England.  Glorious.  The cats sleep upstairs in the sunlight streaming through the bedroom window.   They sniff spring at the open window.

Now I'm thinking of putting my Ruegen book onto the Kindle, too.  Set mostly on the island of Ruegen in the Baltic in midsummer,  with different characters, and also a computer crime novel (loosely), the story  hasn't found a home in the U.S.  By now it is an historical novel of technology.  Remember CD-ROMS?  That generation.  Before skysat phones. Before lots of technology.  

Here's a scrap of a Shadow Warrior's scene from a somewhat drunken university party on the occasion of Verna's graduation.

Raucous-voiced onlookers toasted Verena as she frugged wildly next to a man with bleached blond parted-in-the-middle-hair and a dark, bored face. Earlier, they had swept across the floor in an inhibition-shedding Lambada. Interesting that Verena celebrated her intellectual achievement with such a blow out. Vivacious and happy, she looked good tonight, with clear skin and legs slimmed by dark stockings. 

Every novel has a crazy party, some skinny dipping and a little weed.  Popular culture reigns.  

A street scene in Göttingen, scene of The Shadow Warriors

Two happy and Eleven Sad

I've been querying Festival Madness like crazy over the Burning Man Season.  30 queries, and so far 12 rejections.  Man, they are coming back at me like kamikazees.  Form letters, all.  The agents try to create a kind rejection letter, but that is obviously even harder than crafting a good query letter.

In the general gloom of wondering if anyone is ever going to rep this book, I receive a different kind of rejection from a small press publisher.  Yes, it was a form, but it had my name and my book's title  in tiny neat script, very tiny, very neat script and at the bottom was one word.  Sorry!  It was so sweet, because it let me know if came from a real person who maybe understood on a level that a lot of agents do not. It wasn't from the intern or assistant who is the agent's gatekeeper and whose job it is to parse the queries.

So that was a Good Thing, as Martha would say,  to have a small human interaction in this wrenching process.  The other happy thing, a very happy thing, is that when I returned home from a book party tonight (someone else's party, of course), I had a voice mail from a casual friend saying how much he liked The Shadow Warriors.  Totally unexpected.  This is actually someone whose opinion I value.  I don't even know how he got a copy of the book, but I'm so pleased to get a real compliment on my writing.  I've been down about the very snarky, anonymous review someone posted.  You know it's someone you crossed being a bitch, but still. . . it pulls down the average. 

I figure I've logged about a million words by now, and the years go by and writer's come and writer's go and the whole business is pretty crazy. 

In a pensive moment

The suspense novel is almost finished.  The drug lord is on the run to Cuba (and what fun it's been to research that scenario!)  The heroine and the two kids she is watching are menaced by a very bad guy, and her sister is in big trouble down in Panama (more fun research).  Ask me about traveling to Cuba.  Ask me about Panama banking.  Ask me about the Florida current and Hemingway Marina.  I have learned a lot just sitting here with my butt in the chair and  Googling away.  Google some, write some, send out a few more queries.  This is a weird and probably a stupid way to spend one's life. 

RIP Norfolk Pine and World of Mirrors

The little Norfolk Pine I rescued from the neighbor's trash expired. It was not supposed to be exposed to temperatures less than 45 degrees, and I fear it maybe suffered even freezing or below. I rescued the 20 new ornaments, and now it looks like the giver has moved out and the giftee is hunkered down alone.

Am I I'm becoming a charicature little old lady that peers out from behind her shades?  I don't. At least not much.  We writers are always interested in a "story," and if there is a story happening next door, well, we speculate. And dramatize. I am always telling myself stories, in my dreams and in waking hours. Most of them I don't write down, but I remember them.

Some of them are sad. Some are funny. We went to the local flu shot clinic today, and while we were in line, Significant Other joked, "I don't hear any screaming." He spoke too soon. There were quite a few children and one perhaps six year old boy screamed bloody murder at the H1N1 shot, and then was lined up for the seasonal flu. Now logic would say, if hundred of people including kids were getting the shot, and none of them were so much as wincing, well, then, maybe the shot didn't hurt.

He was gripped by an unreasoning terror, and knew this would be the most painful thing imaginable. He yelled pretty loud, but not quite as loud when the seasonable flu shot was given. It reminded me of the day at the vet's (talk about stories) when a Vietnamese pig was given a shot. One understood immediately and viscerally the expression, "screaming like a stuck hog." Yup. That's what this kid sounded like.

So, World of Mirrors received its 97th rejection today, and I thought about formatting it for a sort of picky publisher or not. NOT. RIP World of Mirrors. But since so many people ask when the next book is coming out, well, WOM will soon get its own blog and I'll publish it in scenes along with photos and historical commentary, maps, whatever. I'll try to publicize this event and hope that readers will enjoy the experience. This is not what I had hoped for this story, which is really fun and exciting and a little different. Some agents and publishers didn't like it because the KGB played a minor role, and I wrote it when no one liked foreign settings, and now the technology is so old that it's a technology historical suspense yada yada. You can see that the subgenre is so sub sub sub that well, WTF?

If I get a lot of interest, I'll publish it on Amazon or Lulu or somewhere.
We made another trip to East Germany and I read about twenty books to do the research and get everything right. All for naught. I'll put a link to the story on this blog, and tweet it, facebook, yada yada. A media blitz, or sorts.

It actually feels like someone died, and I guess that was the dream and all that work, the blood, sweat and tears in vain. Sad. Sad.

Anyway . . . I'll persevere with the other books. This business of marrying technology to fiction turned out to be a major bummer.

Enough whining. Onward. After all, I 'm not the little Norfolk Pine put out with the post-holiday garbage.


Grapeshot

Sucking It Up Again

Last week, in a query frenzy, I sent out queries for World of Mirrors, Promiscuous Mode and Festival Madness.

Today, the rejections started coming in like kamikazes after a battleship. Poor old World of Mirrors, which I rewrote numerous times, has ninety-three (count 'em) rejections. I need to get 114 before I throw in the towel. Harry Hunsicker who went on to publish several well-received books and become an officer in MWA got 113 rejections before he found an agent. Persistence wins the day. I guess. This is really a cool novel--an honest-to-god original story , with fun (read bad) characters, a suspenseful plot and a slice of history on a beautiful island. So whatchagotta do? Dunno. It's hard to let this book die.

I'm having trouble finding agents who might like Promiscuous Mode with its funky locale, business setting and lighthearted adultery. Cripes, it even has a cat and casinos. BTW, a relative reports the sleazy casino I wrote about has been gussied up and has a fancy hotel across the street instead of El Sleazo Motel. I like the lowlife locale better. My writing group loved this book; even Significant Other says it's his favorite, but so far fifty-eight rejections.

Festival Madness is coming up on the rail, rejection-wise. forty-nine to date. If the agent never responds, I count that as a reject. And with Burning Man next month I should query a bunch more agents.

Have you been doing the math? That's 200 rejections, a universe of sucking it up. And still, I'm writing another novel and have one on the horizon after that. Maybe yet another. Crazy Grapeshot, must be the world's biggest masochist. Not.

So. I made pizza tonight for us and the two guests. We always do a lot of toppings, with fresh veggies ascendant, and beaucoup cheese. Always tasty. I can control what comes out of my kitchen. Actually, I can control my writing but not its acceptance.

I'm going up to watch the Red Sox in the All Star game. Tomorrow we're trekking to Plimouth Plantation and the Mayflower.

Thisbe is curled up by my feet and having a cat nuzzle your toes makes up for a world of pain.

Two hundred rejections! OMG.

Earth Day Disaster

My seedlings all died on Earth Day: the tomatoes, cukes, beets--all broke off at the surface of the potting mixture and expired. Too sad. Too much water? Who knows? I'd been nuturing them for two weeks. I replanted the seeds in a different medium. The beans never came up, either.

Mesclun is growing outside, and I'm planting spinach and beets tomorrow.

Alas, horiculture. Sucking it up over something besides writing. That, too. April really is the cruellest month.

Reading, Writing and Arithmetic

Yup! I've been reading. Three novels on the trip. The Last Trip since I've been home, also finishing up Hallie Ephron's book, 1001 Books for Every Occasion. Lots of good suggestions. And for about a year I've been struggling to get through The Guermantes Way. Almost done. Don't think Hallie recommended Proust. He's a bear, but so rewarding.

Writing, yes. Always writing. More rejection. One that particularly stung yesterday, because the editor didn't like the characters, thought the main character unbelievable and the beginning forced. This was the book which my writer's group favors.

I admit I have plenty of unlikeable characters in my books, which is odd, because in life I tend to like most everyone. There are a few exceptions of course, but if I think back over jobs and organizations, most of the folks were all right.

The beginning of this book originally started much earlier in the story, but there is always, always, the advice to get to the murder, the action, no back story, blah, blah, and obviously the advice "shows." Forced beginning. How to make the character believable? My character is much different from me, so how to get into someone else's head? Dunno. Struggling with that in the current opus. So, suck it up, as usual. Currently, that book is nowhere. I'm wondering if I should try non-fiction. Short stories? Poems? Put down the pen forever. Then what?

Arithmetic, you ask? Always the calculations about the month and the money in this time of diminished value of investments. We have been through hard times before, and are used to scrounging, so it isn't so bad. The shock and adjustment were the worst things. So . . . suck it up there, too. Life is a series of suck-ups, isn't it? Or periods thereof.

Goulash soup last night. I stopped at Shaw's and bought one potato and one stalk of celery. . . everything else was in house, and then I discovered, whoops, no pepper. Used the rest of my jar of dried peppers. Couldn't tell any difference. My trick is to use 1 t. sweet paprika, 1 t. hot paprika, and 1 t. smoked paprika. Generous but not obscenely so toss of carraway seeds. Plenty of onion and garlic. I used some cheapy round steak that became tender in cooking. Plenty left for lunch today. I also used a mixture of beef and chicken broth.

Next topic today: competitive cooking

#Queryfail day

They had "Query Fail Day" on Twitter yesterday, and some literary agents tweeted about the worst queries they had ever received. I read a blog that had summarized them and I have to admit there were some lulus. Fictional novelists, take note. Your novel is, by definition, fiction. And writers, if you have been abducted by enemy aliens, don't tell the agent. Pretend this is fiction.

I have sent out a lot of fruitless queries in my day, but none that would shame me. At least, I don't think so.

Lately, I've been having trouble with agents responding, which is to say they don't. This is the problem with email queries. You email the agent. She says, "sounds good. Send 50 pages" or whatever, and you do. In "reply." Right away, before she forgets.

Except, then something happens, and you hear nothing. Nada. Niente. So you send a friendly email follow up, and she replies that she must have lost it, send again.

And that's the end of it. Again, nothing. Except by now you're too embarrassed to send a second reminder. And you also ask yourself if you really want an agent, no matter how big the name or the agency, who keeps losing your writing. I mean, is this any way to run an agency. So I'm moving these queries to the "no response" bucket. And crossing the agent off the list. Gee, she seemed nice. Sharp. Good reputation. Why did she lose my stuff?

Maybe there should be "agent fail day" (#agentfailday) and everyone could bitch and moan about queries that went into the ether. No names, of course. You don't want to burn any bridges. Never burn bridges.

Suck it up. That's the ticket. Jeez, why didn't I think of that?

Grapeshot

Sucking It Up Yet Again

In January and February I was a submitting dervish--novels, short stories, memoir, agents, editors. So many envelopes trundled off to the P.O. Hope is always rampant (maybe that should be my motto or crest or whatever: hope rampant) that this will be the year, the month, the week, that something good happens.

Well, not yet. The first bad news is that the agent who had the whole novel and nothing but the novel did not accept it. I didn't even get a personal letter or any feedback. Major aggro.

There's still the OTHER novel, the Amazon contest (I fear I didn't double space) and the various short story submissions, and all the dumb born writing I sent into the world.

I read some of The Shadow Warriors today and wondered if that wasn't the best book yet. Sad, mad, bad thought. The writing contains a lot of energy, zaniness. Can you write your heart out and then everything that follows is just empty words? Dunno.

So I'm still trundling along with In Flight, and the plot seems to me to have a hole big enough to shoot a bazooka through and still not touch anything. It's kind of stopped talking to me. The sagging middle. Send in a man with a gun. Oh yeah. Good idea.

Grapeshot, who made her delicous poppy seed lemon cake this morning and wonders if she missed her calling as a cook.

The "To Do" list

Home again, and a desk piled high with "stuff" that has to be dealt with. Soon. I update my weekly, sometimes daily "to do" list, and immediately add three more tasks after I have just printed the list. Grrrr. Of course, some of the things on the list have been there for months, such as reformating World of Mirrors for a specific publisher. Also getting rid of some stuff on EBAY. I heard that EBAY prices have tanked since the economy dived into the toilet, but one should not heed rumors. It's easy enough to see for yourself if items have a) sold and b) sold at or near former prices.

Important fact about the stock market. You haven't lost money until you sell. Of course if you sold right when things started to slide, then you have to pay capital gains taxes, or in the case of 401K, etc., ordinary income taxes, and then there's the sales charge, and when you buy it (or something) back, the buying charge, so my theory is that it's better to sit tight and go for what is looking awfully like a Nantucket Sleigh ride (a whaling boat attached to a mad whale) with your investments. I mean, hell, it's only money, right? What would you do with it? Eat? Fill the oil tank?

Hey, oil is down, which means our heating bills won't be quite as high as everyone feared. Everything to do with money is a Nantucket Sleigh Ride. Housing, price of gas, investments. The old Chinese curse, may you live in interesting times has struck again.

I have some really cheap-to-make recipes that taste great, so email me if you would like to have a few.

So after being gone I had to catch up on Obama, and writing, and Suck It Up, along with my to to list. An unblogged blog don't get no hits. Meanwhile, there's daffodils to plant, my Toastmaster's speech to write.

I have chosen the topic, "My culinary disasters." Every cook has a few. My first one was vichysoisse, then boiled potatoes ("an insult to the German tongue"), then soup with bugs, some really vile Jambalaya that even the possum snubbed, and finally, a leg of venison that you probably don't want to hear about. Maybe you do. My recipe for Venison Ragout is sublime, but there were rocky shoals en route to the harbor, so keep the sailing motif.

See prior post.

I'm gearing up to write my big "Why I Am For Obama" post, and that better be soon. Driving back up to New Hampshire this weekend to beat the bushes and knock on a few doors.

So onward, and remember I'll send those recipes if only you will ask.

Grapeshot

Sucking It Up More Than Usual

So, kids, I'm going to begin querying big time: 10 queries per month for World of Mirrors, same for Promiscuous Mode and likewise for Festival Madness. That's 30 queries a month, which is painful but do-able. I'm also going to submit to a few more publishers.

Moving forward, inching along, and no doubt plenty of rejection. Everyone says the writing is good, and therefore the story must be the stumbling block. Need to plug away at my 20's book, too. Wanted it done by August, but I don't think that's possible, but I could write the major scenes and then string them together.

Nothing could be weirder than Festival Madness where I began writing in the middle. I need a new query for World of Mirrors

The courses I've taken on hooks and synopses have not really been as helpful as I had hoped.

It would be nice to have a few comments now and then. I know there are readers, but without posts, the blog stays in the toilet on the Technorati rankings. Please?

Grapeshot

Festival Madness Gets Its First Rejection

Each book, one thinks, "this time it will be different," but there's a sameness to rejection, like waves lapping on the beach.

There are agents who have one or two "token" female clients and the rest are male and these agents generally like "guy books," with guy humor and guy adventures and guy stuff, so why did I even approach this agent? Well, he was at Sleuthfest, and that's the only reason.

And of course he said that,"your idea does not sound like something that I would be interested in representing." So there.

The trouble is, this isn't obviously a "girl" book, either, unless you associate girl's with technology and Molotov cocktails and adulterous behavior. Not chic lit. Not hen lit. Not cozy, not traditional. Not saleable? Well, we shall see. One of these days I'm going to have to scream, "fuck it!' and either a) stop writing and earn real money or b) suck it up and learn to write commercial fiction in a genre with the convensions observed. Anyone reading my books would understand that isn't exactly possible in any sincere kind of way. One of the things I really really like about Antonioni's movies is that he has alienated women and that's something you don't see very often and they aren't alienated in a femaley, touch-feeley way but honest-to-god-alientated. Love it.

God knows, World of Mirrors with it's now 60+ rejections does not appear to be saleable with the East German locale and the technology and history and bad guys all thrown into the mix with a dose of humor and craziness.

My mother said, "you always have to learn everything the hard way." To this day, I wonder if there is an easy way.

Our small guest is having difficulties with Roman Numerals, and like riding a bicycle, they are something you always know once you've learned them. The hard way. Or the easy way.

I have to buy a greeting card, drop off the cleaning, buy some groceries, make a tart and all kinds of unalienated female types of activities.

One of these days. . . .

Grapeshot, sucking it up big time

Three Mad Meows

Annie, a contemplative cat, trying to figure things out.

Friday, as you may recall, is Cat Blog Day. I think it was someone blogging Proust who first mentioned it. Grapeshot, writing as Odette, has a Proust blog (Reading Proust in Foxborough) as well as Suck It Up and a new blog, The Cheeseparer, is also up and running. As you may have intuited, The Cheeseparer is about money saving tips during times of recession and inflation. I have discovered the whole world is blogging this, and most newspapers also have articles about same. The Cheeseparer
looks for the most interesting and useful articles and provides links and commentary. Once I have a little more free time (ha! ha! ha! hysterical laughter!) I'll put in some el cheapo recipes that are a) tasty and b) nutricious.

Back to Cat Blogging. When S.O. came home from the hospital after a sojourn of 6 days, Annie came to greet him, but it was more like a dressing down. Meow! Meow! Meow! Each meow louder and more strident, angrier, as it were. Where were you? Why did you leave me? Don't let that happen again!

So all is still not quite forgiven, and S.O. is holed up in the bedroom, which is Thisbe's territory.
Thisbe, who took to the absence by following me all over the house and then refusing to leave the foot of the bed, has her own tale of woe. The bedroom is her safe refuge and under the bed
is the safest spot in the house.

Yikes! There has been a parade of visiting nurses and physical therapists and they all come into the bedroom, unlike most guests who gravitate to the living room. Where is a cat going to be safe?

Dare one comment on hospital food? Well, it ain't gourmet. Oddly enough, the cafeteria selections at the institution, were quite edible, in fact the Buffalo Chicken Wings were outtasight! But the poor patients: yech.

So here we are with some lovely bouquets adorning the house and two cats who are still out of sorts. Whatchagonna do?

I haven't written one word, not even a query. Later, later.

Grapeshot

Can you believe this?

Blogger has been eating my posts, so this evening I decided to key it into MS Word and then copy and paste. Guess what? Word aborted, and I was left with nothing. Nada. Are the blogging gods trying to tell me something? I can't believe it. Grrrr. Fuggedaboutit.

This brings sucking it up to a new level. Should I change the title to "sweetness and light? Or "Never a post shall be lost?"

Grapeshot

Suck It Up

The Amazon novel contest has a chat group for authors who have submitted an entry and the message boards have been humming. Lots of authors have been writing for years and years without publishing, even those who are journalists and write for a living can't get their novels published. Everyone is looking for the new Dan Brown and they are either looking him/her right in the eye or looking in all the wrong places.

So it is heartening to know I'm not here alone sucking it up, and disheartening to hear all the stories of writing coming to naught. Someone said they just wanted to publish their novel before they died. Of course writers like to kvetch.

My new web site is coming along very nicely, a showcase to promote me and my writing. Seems so egotistical, to spend all this time on BSP. (Blatant Self-Promotion). That's the name of the game. Really an unnatural act to focus on oneself like this.

Ye gods, I wasn't raised to be 'forward.' My mother frowned on forward girls, but that was never my problem, au contraire. The shy slinking violet was more my style.

Have you ever been introduced to someone three or four times and they never remember you? Get the idea? Maybe loud stories of wild board hunting in Russia and downing vodka with the Cossacks. Maybe throw your glass into the fireplace and scream. I don't know. How does one become memorable? Helps to be drop dead gorgeous. Or known to be filthy rich. Rapier wit? Fur coat in July? Dunno. Haven't figured it out yet.

We had another beautiful fall day in New England, more like early October, really, so I put on my Japanese gardening pants and ventured into the yard to pull the frost-killed plants out of their pots to get the pots into the garage before serious damage occured. Only the basil, the begonia and the nasturtiums had actually frozen. Herbs still fine. I harvested a bunch. Icky worms came into the house on the scented geranium. This is not good. Major pruning and spraying indicated. If I find more worms, the plant t will have to be thrust outside to die. I hate to kill plants deliberately.

I made Swiss steak for dinner. Haven't had it for a donkey's age. Pound a piece a round steak on both sides and dredge in seasoned flour. Brown in canola oil. Remove from pan and toss in some sliced onion and a bit of garlic. Cook for a few minutes and toss in some mushrooms. Add the meat back into the skillet and shove the veggies on top. Add a slice tomato if you like, and fresh or dried marjoram is good. Pour 8 oz. of tomato sauce over all, and sprinkle with lots of fresh herbs. Cover and cook in a 350 degree oven for 1 - 1 1/2 hours depending on how tender you require the meat to be.

Serve with mashed potatoes and a green vegetable or salad. Takes a bit of time but few skills are required and it's cheap.

It's not cat blog day but: I asked Thisbe to go into the basement and bring me back a cold Frappuccino. She gave me the strangest look and set her ears at a very odd angle. I swore she understood and was asking, "Me? You want ME to do that? Moi? Surely you jest!"

And she was right, of course. I said it in jest. S.O. brought me the Frappuccino and it was delicious.

Onward,

Grapeshot