Progress—Writing Submissions

In late August, I sent my vampire parody to a major agent I had pitched to at a writers conference. That was the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference in July, which I described here. Although the word was that the market was too saturated with vampire submissions, one agent thought it was intriguing.

Then in November, I sent it to a major science fiction/fantasy publishing house. Why did I wait so long? Probably because I was transitioning between jobs.

During the conference, Andrea Hurst, a major agent, was very generous in giving free advice. She recommended the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

This was the most helpful work I’ve read in a long time. I thought that internal dialog was one of my strengths. This consists of a character thinking to herself, denoted by italics. I had my main character Dee do this while contemplating a neighbor’s lamp:

. . . and admired the two-headed floor lamp in the corner with orange and white panels. Practical for reading to the kids. She didn’t think Hope would mind if she reached back to turn—

But much of the time, this can be part of the narrative. It actually has a stronger feel to it when done this way:

. . . and admired the two-headed floor lamp in the corner with orange and white panels. Practical for reading to the kids. She didn’t think Hope would mind if she reached back to turn—

Of course, sometimes internal dialog is so idiomatic, it should just stay as internal dialog,  as when Dee’s younger sister discovers an important file:

“Alchemical Source of Vampires.” The holy grail. I’m so good, I don’t know what to do with myself.

An unrelated but similar-looking correction from Self-Editing is the overuse of italicized words to indicate which words are stressed in a sentence. I can’t find an example from my old writing too quickly, though books with that minor problem do get published, as my previous post indicated.

And sometimes it is necessary to italicize a word, as when Dee’s older sister tells her during an online chat that something is behind her.

It was some thing, heading away from or towards . . . the kids.

So I’ve thoroughly gone through my science fiction manuscript Alpha Shift and my science fiction/fantasy take on the The War of the Worlds and made a number of corrections. Now I’m going to do the same for a historical fantasy that I’ve never posted excerpts for yet. Stay tuned.