Do You Use Grooveshark?

Do you listen to Grooveshark?

If the answer is no, why?  Personally, I love this website.  It has every song I could ever want on it (to the brand new ones to the golden oldies), you can create your own playlists, and then listen to the songs all on your computer just like you would on iTunes. The difference is that you don't pay a cent. Not one dime.

It's totally free.

Hit up this link here to try it out yourself.

I've been trying to think of ways to cut bills lately. Rising cost of food, rising cost of rent, and permanently frozen wages along with a tumultuous stock market that creates a shrinking 401K instead of one that increases make me skeptical of the future.

My friend Meg told me that civil engineers can't find jobs.  She also told me that her friend with a PhD in nuclear engineering has a "plan" in place to get a job.  I was like...wtf?!  I remember when you had a PhD in nuclear engineering and you didn't even need a plan to get a job.  It just happened...one fell in your lap.

Stock market is tanking again, rich people in our country are complaining because they aren't rich enough while poor people starve...so yeah...I discovered grooveshark and I think I'm not going to buy any more iTunes for a while unless I really cannot live without the song, and that will be a rarity.

So if grooveshark is totally new to you, and you see how wonderful a website it really is, you're welcome :).  Play your favorite songs and dance away.

Oh Voldemort, I Could Just Pinch Your Cheeks

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. . . . . . . ./. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ,:”. . . ./
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Inspiration

When you know your friends are lying to you.

When you see the person you love/like with a person other than you.

When someone says, "I just want to be friends."

Or when you just feel like you're not good enough.

My Message To You:

You are more beautiful, smart, and wonderful than

you can possibly imagine. <3

Happy Wednesday

Microsoft Word 2010 Is Your Friend

As Rogue Mutt has bitched about on his blog (for the record I agree with what he says), submitting manuscripts to small and mid-size publishers can be really hard. Before I went to Double Dragon Publishing, I went to Samhain first, then Mundania Press, and then Dreamspinner Press, and after the third rejection I almost shelved my sci-fi manuscript. I knew about Double Dragon, I knew that it was probably THE best fit for what I wanted to do...but their submission application was daunting. One night at my p.c., I just decided to hell with it and set about seeing if I could do it.  Here's there list of what they require and I'll tell you why Microsoft Word was my best friend:

1) Length of Manuscript. In short they wanted nothing beyond 90,000 words with a disclaimer that they'd look at larger works if they were exceptionally good. I stared for a while at my fat word count of 120,000. There is no way I can cut anything out of this beast. It is plot, plot, plot the whole way through. Why? It used to be 170,000 words. Yes. I said it. I actually thought back in the day that a 170,000 word novel was marketable by a debut novelist. How did I figure this out? I read Stephanie Meyer's blog. She said that Twilight almost didn't sell at 145,000 words. I thought...holy shit...if Twilight almost got rejected at 145,000 words there's no freaking way in hell I'm going to stand a chance. I spent a month trimming and rewriting my book to fit neatly in 120,000 words. And it wasn't neat. I hired an editor for $300.00 (she's damn good by the way) and we cut every single useless word that we could find out of my book. We replaced the weak verbs with powerful ones to shorten sentences. In the end...almost 120,000 words exactly. So yeah...I totally ignored this part of the submission and send to hell with it...not like I haven't seen rejection already.

2) Formatting. I had to use .rtf format...easy and done.

3) Include a short, one-paragraph note in the body of the email, so as to introduce yourself, if you are submitting to DDP for the first time. Okay...I thought what can I say about myself that's interesting? Then I realized I had already done this in the "about me" section of my blog and a commenter had said it was funny. Cut and paste and done. Lesson...you should do an "about me" section in case you ever need to cut and paste, or in the event you need it for other websites. It'll save you so much time.

4) More formatting guidelines. Here was the hairy stuff. A single .rtf file. Oh boy. And it needed all of this:

A. Format, Font: Times New Roman, regular, 12 point.
B. Format, Paragraph, Indents and Spacing, General: Alignment = left, Outline Level = body text. Indentation: Left = 0, Right = 0. Special = First line, By = .5. Spacing: Before = 0 pt. After = 0 pt. Line Spacing = single.

1. Do not put blank lines between the paragraphs of text.
2. Do not use headers or footers, and do not number the pages.
3. Use one-inch margins.
4. Leave two spaces between sentences.
5. Thoughts expressed by a character, as opposed to spoken words, must be italicized rather than placed within quotation marks. Foreign words or phrases, and words that the author wishes to emphasize, must also be italicized. Do not use underlining for this purpose.
6. Do not press the Tab key at the beginning of each paragraph! Doing so will double the degree of indentation. If you habitually do that, and are now putting a completed manuscript into the format we require, please remove all the Tab arrows at the beginning of each paragraph. To render those Tab arrows visible, click on the Show/Hide icon in the Standard MS Word toolbar. (You can use Find and Replace to remove the Tab marks. Click on Find, More, Special, Tab Character. Click on replace. Leave Replace blank. Click on Replace All. The Tab arrows will all vanish.)
7. We strongly recommend that you get into the habit of activating the Show/Hide icon on the Standard MS Word Toolbar as you write, so as to see not only the arrows made by the Tab key, but also the dots representing spaces and the symbols representing paragraph marks.
8. Try not to leave two spaces at the end of the last sentence of a paragraph. Those wrap around. In some formats used by publishers, those wrapped-around spaces can cause trouble. We urge you to perform the tedious task of removing those, if they abound in your manuscript, before sending it to us

Okay...so I wasn't going to read through my whole manuscript and fix this. No frickin' way. But I didn't have to because Microsoft Word has replace features. ^t is the symbol you use for tab. Replaced all of them with nothing and used the indent feature. Done. ^p is the carriage return symbol. So I replaced all the ones that had excess spaces with ones that didn't. Additionally, I replaced all of the "." with one space after them with a "." with two spaces.

So yeah, Microsoft Word is your friend. It's powerful. Know how to use it. You may need it for submitting to agents, publishers, editors, or whoever.

Oh and writing those query letter and the synopsis is something I don't think a writer can ever get around. I used my query as a short synopsis when I submitted my manuscript and then I already had the regular synopsis done so that wasn't a headache either. I'm thankful that I spent a year querying agents because it really wasn't that hard when the time came down to it to put together the package. It only took like four hours work tops.

I Signed With A Mid-Sized Publisher

DDP LOGO

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?

Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome

Syfy has got an upcoming two hour pilot movie for a new series that takes place in the Battlestar Galactica universe. Called "Blood and Chrome". Production for it began in February 2011 in Vancouver, British Columbia (the place where such hits as Supernatural are filmed). The movie focuses on the adventures of a young William Adama during the 10th year of the first Cylon war.

According to an earlier press release, here's what we have to look forward to:

"Ensign William Adama, barely in his 20's and a recent Academy graduate, finds himself assigned to the newest battlestar in the Colonial fleet ... the Galactica. The talented but hot-headed risk-taker soon finds himself leading a dangerous top secret mission that, if successful, will turn the tide of the decade long war in favor of the desperate fleet."

It is to air this October 2011. That makes the creepy month of October even better. I will be glued to the television for not one, but two series... the second being the second season of "The Walking Dead"...AMC's blockbuster zombie megahit that I've been slavering for almost a year now. So yeah...this Fall's television lineup is going to be frickin' AWESOME! And not to mention inspirational. Perhaps the writing bug will bite me as I've been mostly uninspired this entire summer :).

Here is concept art for Blood and Chrome. Enjoy!

 Are you as thrilled as I am?

A Frank Frazetta Movie

Frank Frazetta was an awesome painter and inspired the likes of Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, and other artists to give fantasy a look that would set it apart from other genres. I have been one of the people who wanted to see his work done well on the big screen as a live-action film. I mean, Peter Jackson did it for the Lord of the Rings artists Alan Lee, John Howe, and Ted Nasmith. Well, it looks like Robert Rodriguez is finally going to be the guy that completes the task for Frazetta.

Early next year, the director will start working on Fire and Ice, which you may recall was an animated film back in 1983 from director Ralph Bakshi. But this new film based on Frazetta's paintings will be live action, because Rodriguez wants it to look "like you just stepped into one of his paintings, where you get to see his world, and how he saw people, anatomy, and composition and color."

Here's the movie's official synopsis:

From his stronghold in Ice Peak, the evil Nekron sends forth a wave of deadly glaciers, forcing humanity to retreat to Fire Keep, a kingdom ruled by a generous king. When King Jarol's daughter Teegra is kidnapped, young warrior Larn teams with the mysterious and legendary Dark Wolf, to rescue the princess and the realm from Nekron's evil sorcery.

How would you feel if a movie was made that captured the essence of the concept art featured below?