The Magic of Christmas starts with snow

I Signed With A Mid-Sized Publisher

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I got a nice surprise in my email box on Friday. My sci-fi novel called SLIPSTREAM is going to be published by Double Dragon Publishing and Media Group in 2013. I know it's not one of the Big Six but getting an agent for my sci-fi novel is impossible. I have no idea why. Maybe it's because of the subject matter (there's gay people in it...shhh don't tell anyone :P), or maybe it's because I'm a nobody, or maybe it's because I put a second space after a period in my query letter. Whatever the reason, it has resulted in nothing but rejections, many of them of the form variety. Some even arrived like fifteen minutes after I sent them...talking about blazing fast return. I don't think my query is bad (you can view it in the "Books" tab above as I'm using it to explain what SLIPSTREAM is about). I whittled it down, read Janet Reid 'til my eyes bled, wrote, waited, revised, and wrote again. Two partials and one full manuscript request and 70 some odd rejections later, I decided to look at other options. Just as an f.y.i...one of my partials came with a one line rejection: "LOL. I can't represent this." I've struggled to understand exactly what the agent meant by that especially with the "LOL" attached to it.

Now...just to be clear...this isn't the novel that I said I would be querying in an earlier post a couple of weeks ago. That particular book I'm still hopeful for. I sent out 8 queries to 8 agents and have gotten four rejections. Why only eight? Because, I'm slow, I like to watch t.v. and my friend Stephanie Schmidt has it right (I think) when she advised "don't blanket the world with queries so you can catch mistakes later." So yeah...I'm still querying that other project.

So I got the email from C.E.O. Deron Douglas himself. This is what it said:

Hello Michael,

I'm sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. I've been away from
the office most of the summer. In any event I would be pleased to
offer you a contract with Double Dragon Publishing. If you are still
interested, let me know and I can forward a contract to you.
 
Cheers,
Deron

I read it twice just to make sure that it wasn't another rejection. Then I said yes. :)). So without further ado, here's a little about Double Dragon Publishing gathered from their Facebook and website:

Double Dragon Publishing is a medium-size publisher with an expansive catalog of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror titles. Many of our authors are award winners with "Best Seller" track records that extend over a number of years. You can purchase from our website, or from an extended retail network which includes Fictionwise, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Sony, Kobo, MobiPocket or Apple to name only a few.

Double Dragon Publishing is a Canadian company responsible for the publication of many top rated eBook titles in a variety of genres. Composed of a number of imprints, Double Dragon eBooks is by far the largest division under the DDP umbrella with over 1000 titles and 8000 editions. This is our flag ship imprint established in July 2000.

If you're wondering how I found this publisher, I actually got led to it by Piers Anthony, an author that I've widely read and one who had nothing but good things to say about them on his website. Additionally, I checked these guys out online with the Absolute Write Water Cooler and they are legit. This seemed good enough for me.

What can I expect?
1) Professional editing. I will get assigned an editor sometime in 2012 that will go line by line through my book. I get the impression that it will be edited by multiple people and proofread exactly twice before publication. I can't tell you how good this is. I'm an excellent self-editor but I miss stuff. Plus I hired an editor at my own expense and in the future, I won't have to. All sequels that I write will automatically be accepted for publication. This is such a relief because I feel like I've been writing in the dark for years and I have a huge story to tell with A Crisis of Two Worlds.

2) Cover Art. I read Patrick's blog and he occasionally talks about cover art. Cindy Borgne does too and I had no idea what I would do for cover art. I would like it to be simple...ideally just a glass spider giving off silver light sitting on a brick wall. That'd be perfect. But I have no idea how to draw a glass spider or fill it with shiny gears and switches. Nor do I know how to paint webs that carry information like fiber optic wire. Meh. I also really like the cover art that is gracing many of the Double Dragon books so that is another plus. Here's a sample from one of their books:

3) All the usual formatting and primping and placing of the book in the usual online areas. They even do some advertising but I've no idea what kind they do yet. Marketing will be mostly up to me and I don't really have a problem with that. And I've made a lot of blogger buddies so I'm hoping that in a year or so (if I get a little countdown widget) that some of you may help me by posting it in a sidebar just to get more exposure.

On marketing, another thing that I like about being published by Double Dragon is that I can still go to the book bloggers that I was going to target because they accept manuscripts produced from mid-size publishers. They just won't accept any from self-published authors. So I have doors that are open in that area and I think that's a good thing.

As I've spoken to some of my close friends this weekend, I think that for me, in order to get anywhere, I needed to start somewhere. If I get published and get a name out there, I will be more attractive to agents in the future (with unrelated writing projects) because an editor actually saw merit in my work. Additionally, Double Dragon has made a name for itself as the largest e-publisher of science fiction in the world and has grown to encompass 8 imprints which doesn't seem shabby to me at this stage. Heck...what do I know about publishing? I do feel a little more validated though. Agents only ever gave me basically eight sentences to win them over. As you can see, my eight sentences suck. But when a real world editor actually read my book, he liked it, and decided to invest in me. Some of their authors have hit as high as #53 on Amazon.com's list of books. I think that's pretty decent and shows they get behind their writers. Anyway, seeing as my book is science-fiction...and this seems to be a strong science-fiction centered publisher, that maybe my book is best here after all. What do you guys think?

A Chat With Author Patrick Dilloway On "Where You Belong"

I finished Patrick's masterpiece Where You Belong just in time for Martin's A Dance With Dragons. And Patrick's book really is a masterpiece...I can't say enough good words about it. If you like literary fiction, this has it all. Loveable characters, tragedy, love, loss (a lot of tragedy actually), gay marriage, and incredible dialogue. The story is told through the dialogue and through the narrative of Frost Devereaux who is one of the most likeable voices I've had the good fortune to stumble upon. Anyway, Patrick (who keeps a blog here) allowed me to interview him (one of the perks of having a blog myself--squee).

THE INTERVIEW:

1) How would you define the literary fiction genre and what advice would you have for anyone that wanted to write a book similar to "Where You Belong"?

First off, thanks for interviewing me and I’m glad you enjoyed the book!

Some people define “literary fiction” as snobby or artsy or boring.  Mostly I think of it as books that put characters ahead of action.  It’s like “Tree of Life” versus “Transformers 3;” one is interested in the relationships between the characters and how they grow and the other is about giant robots beating each other up.

If you want to write literary fiction, the best advice is “Don’t!” because it’s not a very hot market.  You’re definitely not going to get rich off of it.  If you aren’t coming from a big writing program then you probably won’t even get noticed.  But if all that doesn’t deter you, then as with any genre you should read some of the masters.  There are the classics like Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, and the Nab.  Then the more modern authors like my hero John Irving, John Updike, Kurt Vonnegut, and Philip Roth.  Or even more modern authors like Michael Chabon and Jonathan Franzen.

2) How did you come up with the title?

The title of the first draft was “No Matter Who You Are” which was the name of a Bob Seger song.  For the second draft as I was writing my notes about what should happen and what it was about, I knew the main point was Frost finding where he belongs, so that became the title.

3) What kind of research did you do in order to get all the details in the book exactly the way you wanted them? For example, is there a KY Academy located in New York or did you base it off of something? CLAW is obviously a combination of the race riots of the sixties and the infamous protestors of the Westboro Baptist Church (which I thought was clever and made for a good villain).

I’m pretty sure there’s not a KY Academy anywhere.  I kind of hope not.  It’s a composite—and somewhat of a parody—of the private schools used in John Irving’s novels.  He bases his off his time at Exeter, so I guess mine would be somewhat loosely based on that.  I don’t remember any specific research about CLAW but it is largely based on Westboro and other radical right-wing groups.

My comment==>KY was a running joke in Dilloway's book because it was a school for many gay men to attend (all male student body) and the initials "K Y" smacked of the lubricant that is advertised on commercial television. I thought it was clever.

4) There are obviously many conflicts that you could have chosen for the book to revolve in and around. Why did you choose to center the conflict around the evolving definition of marriage and love? SPOILER ALERT: This book has several profoundly deep and meaningful gay relationships in it.

I wanted to find an issue that interested me and that I cared about and gay marriage was one that struck me right away because to me at least it’s such an obvious abuse of civil rights and the excuses detractors use are always so pitiful.  All they say is, “The Bible says…” or some nonsense about “Next people will want to marry trees!”  But I didn’t want to say those people are WRONG and DUMB because there’s not much of a book in it.  My take on it, which is somewhat cynical, is that it’s not about genitals; it’s about compatibility of the souls.  Hetero marriages blessed by God and all that fail all the time, to the point where in the US it’s about a fifty-fifty chance of it ending in divorce.

So then I needed to think of how to say that in a story.  One day the thought hit me, “What if a guy married a woman and then a man?”  That got the ball rolling.

5) Are the stakes much higher in this kind of genre? I noticed in reading it that oftentimes the conflicts in Frost's life had the worst possible outcome, i.e., death.

More than anything that’s another influence of John Irving.  You read books like “The World According to Garp” and “The Hotel New Hampshire” and “The Cider House Rules” and there’s always the presence of death in them.  Though I am a bit morbid too; Death is my favorite character in the Discworld series.

6) If you could have anyone alive today play Frost, Frankie, Frank, and Kaufmann...who would you choose for these roles in a big screen adaptation and why?

In all honesty I think I’ve given this question more consideration than any other.  The problem is that if I’m playing casting director is that I’d want actors in their early-mid 20s so they can play the characters from late teens into their 30s when the story ends.  I’m not all that familiar with who the best 20-something actors of today are, so it’s kind of tough.  But here goes.

Tobey as Frost would be awesome in my opinion.

Frost:  My first choice would be Tobey Maguire just because he was already in “The Cider House Rules” and Frost is based a lot off of Homer Wells.  The problem is that he’s probably too old to convincingly play the younger Frost.  Second choice would be Jesse Eisenberg/Michael Cera.  I think either of them (they’re interchangeable in my mind) has the same understated, easygoing vibe.  Dark horse would be Jon Foster, who was in “The Door in the Floor” (an adaptation of John Irving’s “A Widow for One Year”) and “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh.”  He played the same type of character in both of those.  He’d probably be easier to get too.

I could see Shia LeBeouf playing literary agent Kaufmann.

Kaufman:  The best choice would be if you could get a time machine and kidnap Robert Downey, Jr. from about 20 years ago.  Because the adult Kaufman is a sarcastic smart ass spoiled rich boy.  But since we don’t have time machines I got thinking of Shia LaBeouf of “Transformers” fame just because he’s young and I don’t think he’d have to stretch to be a sarcastic smart ass spoiled rich boy.  He could pretty much play himself.

Jennifer Lawrence as Frankie. KATNISS!

Frankie:  You need a girl who’s got some dramatic acting chops.  I got thinking of Jennifer Lawrence who was in “Winter’s Bone” or maybe Saorise Ronan from “The Lovely Bones” although she might be too young.  Or maybe one of the Fannings.  I’m not familiar enough with Emma Watson from the Potter movies to know if she’d be a good fit.  Just not the girl from “Twilight!”

Abby:  You don’t list her but I got thinking of her anyway.  I think Ellen Page or Emma Stone would be good for her because she’s the sassy, cynical Lois Lane-type.

Alex Pettyfer is my vote for Frank Maguire.

Frank:  I have no idea.  The problem is that Frank is a complex character.  He’s a selfish, manipulative jerk a lot of the time, but he’s also tender and generous when he wants to be.  He’s also highly intelligent and often has an imperial bearing.  So you’d need more than someone who looks hawt.  Maybe someone else can figure out who could bring all of that to the table.

I'm intervening here and voting that Alex Pettyfer pictured at right plays Frank Maguire (Frankie's twin brother). Now I may re-read some of those sex scenes.

7) Why did you settle for the cover art that you did for this book?

Well the first cover was pretty much a generic template with a bit of Microsoft Office clipart.  Then for Xmas we got my mom a scanner thing and it came with Photoshop Elements and since my mom didn’t need it, I took it and put it on my computer.  Once I fiddled a little with that, I figured I could make a cover that looked slightly more professional.  If you look at a lot of literary books, or really any books, most of them don’t use art that’s drawn.  Most rely on photos, probably stock photos that are cheaper than paying someone to draw something.

I went to a stock photo site and looked for something with a sunset or sunrise because of the scenes where Frost and Frankie are sitting in her window and such.  I chose the one I did because I liked the desk and hat rack and so forth in it because the story is about Frost finding a home, so I think the picture conveys that meaning.

8) This book has obvious sequel potential. Are you thinking of writing one?

As a joke on my blog I wrote up an idea borrowed from “Spaceballs” called “Where You Belong 2:  The Search for More Money” that has Frost and company searching for buried treasure a la “National Treasure” or “The da Vinci Code.” 

In reality if there ever were a sequel, I don’t think it’d be for another 10-20 years or more.  Any sequel would have to cover what happens to Frost and company through middle age, into old age and I’m not at that point in my life where I could really write that.

9) I think that this book is a masterpiece. Did you even try to get an agent for it and were just unsuccessful? Why did you decide to self-pub?

I queried a couple-dozen agents and didn’t get much of a nibble.  To be honest I always figured that I’d have to self-pub because the book is very long and deals with controversial issues.  It’s not the kind of thing a mainstream publisher would be very interested in and smaller presses wouldn’t probably have the budget for it.  At the same time, I felt this one was too good to sit in a drawer or in a blog no one ever reads.  So self-pubbing was the way to go.

10) I think that Frost is a beautiful character and a gentle soul. Did it bother you to do so many horrible things to him? At times I was thinking...holy crap Patrick...ease up on Frost will ya? Let him have his happiness for Christ's sake.

I think Frost says it best when he says, “Were this a fairy tale I would have ended the story that night with "They Lived Happily Ever After." Certainly that's how I thought the story would end as I stroked Frankie's hair and listened to her soft breathing. 

But life is not a fairy tale.”

I don’t think anything really bothered me until I got to the very end.  I went through a number of different endings before settling on the one I did.  In one ending Frost goes back to Vegas after his father dies and scatters his ashes at the old casino where Jack used to hang out.  In another he goes back to help victims of the floods in Iowa and finds a new calling.  But I didn’t really like those.  Maybe because they didn’t really get back to the titular issue of him finding out where he belongs in love.  After everything that had happened I didn’t want it to be the kind of book that ends in some arbitrary place.  I wanted me and the reader to feel that this chapter of his life had come to an end without getting too dark or too happy.

Buy Patrick's Book at this link for .99 cents on kindle ebook or for $17.99 in paperback.

Digital Books, Bookshare, and Accessibility

My day job is in assistive technology. This means that I recommend technology solutions to people with disabilities to hopefully provide an improvement in their standard of living. For example, one of the job duties I perform involves the set-up of voice-controlled computer systems and voice-controlled environmental control units for quadriplegics. But those are just two examples.

Being in this field has some perks and one of them is knowing about all the new stuff that's being created to solve disability issues. What I wanted to talk about today has to do with how digital books can close learning gaps for students with print disabilities.

Let's start with a question: why digital books?

Well, 59% of students surveyed by the Association of Educational Publishers (May 2010) said online textbooks would have a positive impact on their learning.  In contrast, only 56% said the same thing regarding laptop computers. Simply put, digital books equalize educational opportunities. Here are more statistics for you regarding digital accessible materials (a thing I found to be both exciting and surprising):

• 95% graduated on time.
• 85% improved academic achievement.
• 55% increased time spent in general education classrooms and decreased the time spent receiving special education services.
• 95% decreased reliance on human assistance.
• 55% experienced increased levels of parent satisfaction.

• Checkout the National Center on Accessible Instructional Materials for more information.

The Long Reach of Bookshare:


Bookshare.org serves individuals who are blind

or have severe visual impairments that prevent

them from reading ordinary newspaper print, even

when wearing glasses or contact lenses, individuals

with learning disabilities such as dyslexia, which

interfere with the ability to read print material,

and people with mobility limitations that interfere

with holding or turning the pages of a book.



What is Bookshare?  Bookshare is an online library of accessible media for individuals with print disabilities. Bookshare believes that people with print disabilities should have the same ease of access to books and periodicals that people without disabilities enjoy. It operates under the Chafee Amendment to U.S. Copyright Law, worth a read and located here. It's funded by an award from OSEP, the Office of Special Education Programs in the U.S. Department of Education. Because of this award, Bookshare can offer memberships and books to all U.S. students for free. As of January 2011, it has more than 125,000 members, more than 8,000 schools and other organizations, more than 95,000 titles, and more than a thousand new books added every month.

What does Bookshare offer?

• Digital books for individuals with print disabilities.
• FREE memberships for qualified U.S. students through the OSEP award
• FREE assistive technology software.
• 24/7 access to books.
• 2,300 + K-12 textbooks with images.
• College/University textbooks.
• Classroom Reading Books.
• New York Times Bestsellers.
• Newberry, Caldecott Winners.
• 1,000 books in Spanish.
• More than 75 publisher partnerships.
• 270 national and regular newspapers and magazines.

SOURCES of BOOKSHARE BOOKS:

They basically come from four different places. 1) Volunteers chop-up, scan, proofread, and send the books off via email. 2) NIMAC. 3) Publishers. 4) Universities.

Bookshare uses the DAISY format. But what is this exactly?

DAISY stands for Digital Accessible Information System. In other words, reading books on a computer using visual presentation and/or synthetic speech (multimodal). Examples of DAISY-Compatible AT software are:

(NOTE THAT HumanWare Victor Reader Soft and Don Johnston READ:OutLoud Windows and Macintosh both have FREE versions available for download for Bookshare members. Additionally, both feature FREE high-quality Acapela voices)

• Don Johnston READ:OutLoud Windows and Macintosh.
• HumanWare Victor Reader Soft.
• Kurzweil 3000.
• TextHelp Read & Write Gold.
• Freedom Scientific WYNN.
• Freedom Scientific OpenBook.
• GhPlayer.
• Dolphin EasyReader.
• DAISY Consortium AMIS.
• Nextup TextAloud.
• Innovative Rehabilitation Technology eClipseReader.
• DAISY software players.

If you want to find out more, I suggest visiting the Bookshare website. Anyway, with all the buzz in the writing circles about the impact of ebooks and a debate on what it means to you as a writer, I thought I would share a little examined aspect of digital access with you that I see as a huge positive impact on the world.  Know that someday, when you get published, your writing may be enjoyed by someone that is severely disabled. If it were just 20-years earlier, they may never have been given the opportunity to enjoy what you wrote. I think that's a miracle in and of itself and should be something of which you can be proud.