Shadow Bound Swiped!

I just found out about a book (coming out in July) that has the same title as the book I'm querying. Oops.
(To be fair, I've had this title since April. Whatever.)

So, you can support this book Shadow Bound just for having a totally awesome title:

At least I know my title was marketable.

A friend of mine was asking me about the query process. She asked if I started with agents in the middle/bottom of my list and worked my way up. I always thought you should start at the top and work your way down. I'd hate to get an offer if I hadn't given my top choices a chance to read my work.
I keep 5-8 queries out at a time. As soon as a rejection comes in, I send another one out. It keeps me sane and focused on the next step.

I also keep all my rejections. It's weird, I know, but one time I went through my rejections and found one that I'd thought was a form rejection. Then I realized it specifically mentioned the reason for the rejection. Sometimes agents will have more than one form rejection. One for weak plot, one for weak characters, one for weak voice, etc... Even though they're form rejections, those can be helpful!

I only have one link to share with you: Why Rejection Letters Are Great. Seriously. It's all about the numbers. And persistence.

And I have a question for you: How do you query? Do you go top to bottom? bottom to top? How many queries do you put out there at a time? And how do you handle those rejections?

Build a Setting that Pulls Its Own Weight (and then some)

So I'm finally getting to a craft post! I found some great stuff on setting. It's something I used to not think about on the first draft. I used to forget about it or my setting would just have a few token descriptions sprinkled in and they were ordinary. Boring.

How to Revise Your Novel helped me to take a step back from my story and really see where my characters were and why I'd picked these particular locations. (Maybe you've heard that the setting needs to be the only place where the story could take place? It's true. Sometimes I did it subconsciously, but other times I had to work to make my setting count.)

As I work through the first draft of my WIP, I'm noticing that I'm SO much slower than I was with my other novels. Then I went back and read what I wrote and you know what? There's setting! Real setting. Meaningful. The setting helped build tension and character.

Katrina Stonoff wrote a fantastic article that really made an impact on me called Make Your "Where" Memorable. She helped me to see beyond the typical and bring out those details that you wouldn't expect, but that really draw the reader in.

Enrich Your Descriptions by learning how to develop you writer's eyes. There's more to a setting than what you see with the naked eye. How would you see a scene if you were a child? If you were in a hurry? If you were objective? This post goes deeper to even discuss connotation, which is definitely worth a read if you're not familiar with it.

Cynsations had a fun guest post by Deborah Halverson last week where she asks: what ever happened to description? It seems to have all but disappeared, what with writers worrying about pace and character and plot.

And this week, Greenhouse Literary posted How to Write the Breakout Novel Part 5: A Vivid Setting.
If you haven't delved into The Bookshelf Muse, I highly recommend some exploration. Scroll down the right-hand column for a list of settings. Click the link for "Forest" (or whatever is relevant to your story) and you'll be taken to an extensive list of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures you might find there. I use this site all the time to make my scenes pop.

Just a little goody for those of you who may write traditional fantasy: The Middle Ages, Chivalry, & Knighthood is an amazing go-to source for terms, time lines, maps, culture, food, history... you name it!

Snow White and Ivy Thorn: Part 2

I can't think of any fairy tales that take place in a field, but I'm not always dropped right in the middle of things. There's a castle not too far off. That's always a good place to start. There's always something cookin' up in castles, so I make my way over there.

The great thing about fairy tales is that they're vague. Apparently, this fairy tale doesn't mention any guards around the castle.

It's a pretty depressing place. Empty stone hallways, the occasional gargoyle, and it smells like my Uncle Harry's storage unit. Seriously, who designed this place?

I finally find a room with something of interest in it. (Unless you're into tapestries and closets full of ball gowns. If that's the case, you'd probably never leave this place.) This room isn't quite as bare as the others. It has some fancy red curtains and a huge mirror on the wall.

I'm pretty sure I know where this is going, so I hide behind a curtains. They're long enough to hide my shoes, but they smell like my grandma's sheets.

I may not get dropped into a fairy tale in the right place, but I seem to have a knack for getting dropped in the right time. A woman in a long velvet gown comes in. Her hair is the usual--it glitters like gold or sunshine or whatever and her skin's the color of milk. Her lips... you get the idea. She's a good-looking woman, maybe late twenties. The important thing is she's wearing a crown, so I'm assuming this is the queen.

She walks right up to the mirror, and what do you think she says? "Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"

Bingo.

Part 3/3 of Snow White and Ivy Thorn