This is NOT What You Think It Is…but it’s still cool.

NO! I didn't get a publishing deal - this is a self-published version.

I know, I know.  It looks like I miraculously got a publishing deal in the last two weeks, doesn’t it?  Well, I didn’t (not that I’m not working to achieve that goal, but nothing happens by miracle in the publishing business, that’s for sure!).  This is a proof copy that I got for free through CreateSpace as a prize for getting as far as I did in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest.  Free=Good.  It’s a little trippy to see it with the glossy cover and dedication and formatted on the nice book-paper.  I’ve been looking at it digitally and on 8 1/2 X 11 inch paper in notebooks for so long that it was a big step to see it in “real” book form – even if it’s just a proof copy.  The CreateSpace folks do a great job, and if I ever decide to spend the money, take the risk, and self-publish in paper form – I’ll definitely give them a try.  As it stands, if I ever DO self-publish, I’ll definitely be going the e-book route first – more cost effective for the writer, and it’s the up and coming medium.

In other writing news…I received a very nice rejection (#6 : ) from one of my top ten most wanted agencies. (I won’t mention which one – doesn’t seem sporting).  I also submitted my severely cut down query (only 250 words! Yikes!) to Kate Schafer Testerman of the KT Literary Agency, and she gave me some great suggestions for making it more appealing to agents.  I intend to take her sage advice, revamp my query letter, and start with KT Literary.  I love Kate’s blog, and have a great deal of faith in someone with such a sharp sense of humor who also sold Powerless by Matthew Cody (which is both on the Rebecca Caudill Book Award list for 2011-12 AND has some similarities to my own Mojo Fingers).  The query tutoring session was sponsored by Pitch University’s June PitchFest (awesome!).

I just finished a really basic synopsis for Mojo Fingers to send out to my Manuscript Exchange Group in preparation for SCBWI’s Writer’s Retreat weekend (July 8-10).  I’m hoping to get some good experience with a critique group that will hopefully carry into future endeavors.  So far, everyone has been really nice and open-minded.  You can tell we’re all chomping a the bit to get to a weekend full of writing.  The chance to get away and sit by a lake and just write all weekend is really tempting!   I can’t wait!  I’m hoping to get my query letter whipped into shape, and do a much cleaner, more concise job of writing my Mojo Fingers Synopsis in the next two weeks before I leave. That will hopefully leave me the weekend in Springfield wide open to working on new ideas.

I’ve got 4 projects I could be working on that weekend.  I haven’t decided if I want to just work on a whim on whichever piece I feel like working on or if I should really force my nose to the grindstone on just one project.

1.  The favorite piece I’m working on is currently called “The Rude Awakening of Marlon Grunt” about a kid who tries to end his own life, but instead wakes up being able to see and hear his guardian angel.  It’s kind of an updated, teenage version of one of my very favorite movies, “It’s a Wonderful Life” – only set in a Trailer Park in Central Illinois with an emo teenage boy.
2. The second piece I’m working on is tentatively titled “Changing the Jericho Road” – a sci-fi allegory piece about a nation torn by civil war, and some of the kids who are running from the violence.
3. The third piece is the follow-up to Mojo Fingers, and it follows Deandra Timmons’s story.  It’s tentatively titled one of two things, either “Silver-Tongued Diva” or “Rain Maker”.  I can’t decide.  This time, we listen to Deandra navigate the political game at Tillman Middle School as she tries to get herself elected Class President along with the rest of the Bella Vista Social Club.  She has to overcome a Princess Posse candidate, a teacher who is working against her candidacy, and her own need to control what’s going on around her in order to emerge victorious.
4. The fourth piece is my already drafted “Escape from Grace” – a dark, post-apocalyptic adventure novel I wrote last November.  Right now, it’s told in the voice of a 37 year old woman, and wouldn’t work as a YA novel, but I might have a plan to change the voice of the narrator to an 18-year old girl.  I’d need to clean up the story a bit as well.  I know that it needs a lot of work.  I probably should have workshopped this piece rather than Mojo Fingers, but I wasn’t ready to let anyone see this yet without the changes.

So, it’s going to be a full two weeks and then a great writing-packed weekend!  In the meantime, I’ve been enjoying some of my own reading in pursuit of my 50 books for the summer (although I’m falling a little behind this week).  I’ll update you on that later this week.

 

Getting Back on the Merry-Go-Round

Drama Club is done for the year.  Our cast party was yesterday, and I couldn’t have had a better time with a more creative group of people!  We busted out some new improv games, ate, cleaned, laughed, got nostalgic, and generally had a good time.  I was very impressed with how some of our new talent is really beginning to shine.  I can’t wait to see what next year’s group will be like.

Now that things are beginning to slow down a little (not so’s you’d really notice, but such is life until June 8th), I have started getting back down to the business of pursuing my next writing project(s) and finding an agent/publisher who will take me on.  I have been in contact with the most gracious puslishing gurus, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry (The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published; http://www.thebookdoctors.com/ ) who are taking a look at the Mojo Fingers manuscript and my list of possible agents and giving me their feedback.

Several of my students from last year who haven’t had a chance to read my novel have asked for copies or are now in the process of reading it.  I’m looking forward to their feedback.

I just signed up for a SCBWI event (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illutstrators) in July that will be a great little working mini-vacation.  It’s a writing retreat in Springfield, IL by the lake.  Three days of as much writing as I can fit in, critique groups, and meals with other writers.  I’m looking forward to it. 

I’m currently grading scripts my honors students have written for their 90-Second Newbery films.  I like them so much, that I think I’m going to cajole my niece and nephews (who I will be hanging out with a LOT) into choosing a book to read together this summer and writing a script for us to film and submit to James Kennedy’s awesom-azing contest for them.  If you haven’t heard about this, go see James Kennedy’s really spectacular blog: http://jameskennedy.com/category/blog/ .  (Check out his “feud” with the wonderful Neal Gaiman – you will laugh until you weep.)  There are some really spectacular examples of 90-Second Newbery entries, not to mention all the other cool stuff he has on there for his book, The Order of the Odd-Fish. 

James Kennedy's hilarious book for lovers of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Lemony Snicket and the like.

 

I’m also looking at self-publishing.  There used to be such a stigma attached to publishing your own work.  However, the more I use my Nook e-reader, the more I realize that a lot of the genre fiction I’m reading is self-published.  More and more young people are getting e-readers.  I’m thinking it might be a good idea to get Mojo Fingers out there on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.com.  That might become a project this summer as well as querying agents/publishers for Mojo Fingers.

I’m still waffling on what my next project should be.  I’m working on three right now.  Before the summer really gets going, I’m  thinking I need to choose one to really focus on.  BTW, in case you hadn’t heard – Nanowrimo is offering a summer camp for those of us who would like to write a novel in a month other than November (I’m thinking HECK YEAH!).  So, for more info, check out the Nanowrimo website: http://www.nanowrimo.org/node/4032185

 

The Results, The Aftermath, and The Getting Back On of Horses

I sort of suspected that I wouldn’t move on to the next round in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, but I had hoped that it might cross just the right desk in this competition to make to the final 50.  I found out Tuesday morning that it had not moved on in the competition, and kept expecting to feel more upset.  (I was actually much more bummed that I was cut from the final rounds of two of my 10-minute play competitions earlier this month). I waited for the crash that comes after the rejection of your work, and it just has not materialized yet.  Perhaps this is for the following reasons:

1. I feel pretty doggone good about beating out 4,750 other YA entries to get where I did. 
2. I read many of the excerpts from the other contestants and really felt like I was honored to be among their company
3. I’m kind of relieved to not have to wait any longer to find out what’s going to happen – I can move on with getting Mojo Fingers published via a more traditional route (query letters, The Book Doctors, and perfecting my manuscript).
4. I’m fully “gone to the mattresses” (a term from the movie “The Godfather” that in modern parlance means blocking out the rest of the world to go to war with all the work you have to do) this week and next week due to the spring play
5. I received a really positive (if starkly written) review by Publishers Weekly which I, hopefully, can parlay into a selling point in my queries to agents, and a nice plug on my website (Note to Self:  Put it on website). It sort of made me feel like I was in 51st place instead of 250th. 

Here’s the Review, hot off the CreateSpace ABNA presses:

ABNA Publisher Weekly Reviewer

Joey Tate is a fat girl who has lost her only friend, Kristen, to the clique of popular girls led by the detestable Madison. Joey struggles in school, partly, perhaps, because her father is leaving. Isolated and picked on, she befriends the janitor, Toefingers Bartkowiak, whose toes have replaced his amputated fingers. Joey, who Toefingers bestows with the nickname MoJo to boost her confidence, is entered into a lunch group for struggling kids unofficially called the Bellavista Club. There she makes new friends and works together with them to create a comic book, since she has an aptitude for drawing. The group is shocked to see that Joey’s doodles appear to be coming true. The kids are well characterized and the book does a nice job of developing them and their attitudes. At its heart, this is a feel-good story about finding friends and feeling comfortable in one’s own skin, and it tells that story well.

Nice, right?

In fact, (to whinge like an ungrateful wretch for just a moment), it sort of reeks of “nice”.  Like I’d somehow written a lost storyline about the Waltons or the Cosbys, or that the reviewer was being kind.  (Wow. I should probably not dissect this. Leave well enough alone, Wisniewski!)  Still, I sort of wish they’d been meaner – told me what I could have fixed that might take it to the next level, you know?  Blatant moment of ingratitude over.

So, today was our districts writers conference, and I was truly honored to spend the day with such motivated and creative students.  I’m hoping that my presentation, if not the scintillating 30 minute infotainment experience it might have been, was at least useful and gave them a sense that “If I can do it, so can you.”  I have work to do on that presentation (a lot, to be honest) before I’d ever even consider taking it on the road to someplace where I don’t know the kids or the kids are not all motivated writers like today’s impressive crowd.

I got the opportunity to have lunch with (and give driving directions to) James Kennedy, author of Order of the Odd-Fish, performer, stalker of Neil Gaiman (check out his fake feud with Gaiman on his website – Hilarious!)creator of the Dome of Doom and the 90-Second Newbery Film Festival, and all-around gargantuanly creative thinker.  http://jameskennedy.com/  This is the second event in a year that I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with him, and he was so pleasant and helpful and honest about his own publishing experiences, that I was relieved to hear about his own rocky road to success – it makes me feel like I’m on the right track.  I was also excited to hear about his next book, which he is still editing.  If it is half as intelligent, original, and laugh-out-loud funny as Odd-Fish, it will be a joy to spread the good word for him. 

What’s next?

Back on the horse, friends and neighbors. I’ll be contacting The Book Doctors again to see if they’ve had a chance to take a look at the list of possible agents I sent and the manuscript I sent so I can start querying again soon. 

I’ll be looking for more ways to punch up that letter, finish writing a tight synopsis, and continue making revisions on the manuscript. 

I’ll be starting my new novel(s). and I’m tempted to get out Escape From Grace and start hacking away at that (that’s got quite a bit of heavy revision and complete revamping of areas of it coming).  I was giving one the young writers today a rundown of the storyline, and couldn’t help but fall a little bit back in love with the idea again.  I know the execution (as it stands) is flawed, but I might have left it to stew long enough (since November, right?) that I might be ready to see it with some fresh eyes.  Don’t remember which book I’m talking about?  Here’s my old blog about it, excerpts and all! http://mrswisniewskinanowrimo.blogspot.com/

It’s time to start taking some of my own advice – Finish Things!