Cover Mock-Ups

So one of my coworkers asks me a lot about my novel - since she is a joking sort of person she insists that I should write not about the Potato Famine, but a potato version of 50 Shades of Grey, because THAT would sell like crazy (I roll my eyes a lot) - and she offered to make me a book cover.

I thought she was kidding.

On the (extremely) off chance she WASN'T kidding, I thought she'd come in with some fairly respectable stuff, not, you know, clip art and comic sans, but nothing terribly impressive. Maggie tends to sell herself short in the (very strange) conversations we have between customers.

I was in no way expecting something as amazing as this, and I thought it might be fun to share with you!

Dear future publisher: This. Please and thank you. 

I know, right??? I was completely floored when Maggie handed a printout of that to me a few weeks ago.

And, of course, in the vein of "you should write something like Twilight because that would take you no effort and you'd make a million dollars":

I present: Potato Famine Twilight, complete with blurb from Hedwig.

Maggie has assured me that the "jacket copy" is all gibberish, so don't strain yourself trying to see what it says. But still! How cool is that? An actual cover - even if not a real one from a publisher - is a pretty exciting thing to see. :)

I hope you're all staying warm in this horrific cold! Until next week, fair blog readers.

Query critiques?

Hello there, blogosphere!

As you know, I'm working on edits for my manuscript "The Long Road Home." But that means I also need to polish up my query letter.

So I'm going to do a possibly crazy thing that probably won't work and post it here and beg for some feedback. Let me know what you think, and what needs some tweaking. Thanks!

Dear Agent Awesome:

            Fifteen-year-old Maire Finn made a promise to herself: no matter what happened, she was not going to die. 

            Elbows in her face didn’t matter; she’d give as good as she got, so long as she came out of it with a handful of stolen barley in her pocket. But no amount of bloodied noses could keep black slime from spreading across the potato fields. And as much as she’d like to shove her fist into her overfed English landlord’s gut, even that wouldn’t change the fact that he was demanding money her family would never be able to find in time. 

            So when a mysterious man with a dangerous smile appears spinning a gold coin like a spider’s web, Maire jumps on his offer of work immediately. It’s only after she’s been whisked away that she learns she’s been tricked. Her Secrets Man is no ordinary human, and his plans for her don’t involve her ever seeing her family again. 

            Magical tricks or no, the farm he’s placed her on is real enough. But a full stomach hasn’t dulled Maire’s stubbornness. She is going to figure out what exactly it is that he wants from her. She is going to find a way to get around his rules and keep her family from starving. And she is going to save herself, on her own terms this time. 

            Even though crossing him might just be more dangerous than the famine.

            THE LONG ROAD HOME is a YA historical fiction with fantasy elements complete at 85,000 words. I hope it will appeal to readers who enjoy the combination of historical reality and the supernatural in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Scorpio Races or Elizabeth C. Bunce’s A Curse Dark As Gold. 

            I am a recent graduate of Ithaca College, where I got my B.A. in Writing with a minor in History. My historical nonfiction has received the 2013 Elliot Mayrock Writing Award and a Best Paper award at the 2013 Phi Alpha Theta regional conference. In addition, my fiction was the recipient of the 2013 Runner Up prize in Ithaca College's Writing Department Contest and is published on their website.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Well... now what?

The Irish Novel is packed up and shipped off to beta readers, waiting for their seal of approval (more likely, their long list of notes and things to fix).

And so... here I am... waiting for comments.

I hate this part.

It's very strange, not having anything to do. I don't have a book to read right now. I just finished rereading The Book Thief for the fourth time in preparation for seeing the movie in November (for the record: I still cried at the end. Zusak!!!) I have Cornelia Funke's most recent book on reserve at the library and quite a lot of bookstore gift card money from writing contests last semester, but I just haven't gotten around to getting down there and picking things up. (The one downside of living in the middle of nowhere is that you are in the middle of nowhere.)

And I haven't felt like starting another writing project just yet. Which is, admittedly, terrifying. Just at this moment I don't feel like I have a story I NEED to tell, and since that's kind of the THING that I DO all the time... well, it's a bit concerning that I'm not immediately wanting to jump into the next project. I'm hoping it's just post-editing laziness, and that an idea will come along and need me to write it soon.

I guess that leaves me to catch up with the couple of friends who haven't graduated and just moved back to school, make cookies, and continue working on this whole "being an adult" thing that I'm doing now. I think I'm steadily getting better at that. :)

Tell me, dear blog readers: do you always have another project you jump right into after finishing the last one? Or do you let yourself laze around a little bit first? 

And Another One Done!

... well, for now. :)

So I was convinced that yesterday was Monday, hence this random Wednesday post. But this random Wednesday post brings you the news that I am *finished* with this draft of The Long Road Home!

WOOOO *throws confetti* WOOOO.

So, what happens next?

Well, it has just gone out to beta readers (as of right now, that consists of my roommate extraordinaire Lisa, my mom, and my publishing internship buddy Ari) because they are both nice people who like me and also people who will be very honest with me. I do so hope they'll enjoy it. (And not rip it to shreds TOO much.) After that, there'll be another round of edits, of course. Perhaps more than one more round, depending upon the level of edits suggested to me.

While that's happening, I get to write up a query letter (ugh) and a synopsis (double ugh) so as to prepare for AGENT SUBMISSIONS sometime this fall, hopefully!

And also not listen to Mumford & Sons for about a month at least. This last draft was fueled entirely by Mumford songs (well, that and tea). But I can hardly help it when this song in particular has the title of my novel in the lyrics, can I? (Sssh, don't tell Maire her theme song was written by a bunch of English guys.)

And... start something new, I suppose? We'll see what's next in store!

Till next week, dear readers... when I promise to remember when Tuesday actually is.

Getting Somewhere

I'm not going to lie to you: graduating from college kind of sucks.

This summer has been a weird limbo, even though I tried so hard to avoid that very situation. But I stayed in the same place I had been in, even though most of my friends moved on, some to do very exciting and important things like the Peace Corps in Madagascar or teaching English in South Korea.

Whereas I was stuck in Ithaca, in a sublet that was filthy and uncomfortable and felt rather unsafe, with a job that, let's be fair, made me miserable. I had thought that I'd be okay at letting hotel guests vent their frustrations on me, but I wasn't. Ultimately, I left that job, deciding that struggling to get more than four hours' sleep a night was not worth it. That being treated like a failure by at least half the people who came through the hotel was not worth it.

I think that, no matter what you end up doing immediately after you graduate, you're struck with this paralyzing fear that you're doing it wrong. I had a full time job and a place to live and everything, and yet I couldn't help but feel like I'd skipped a step. Like there had to be more to it, even right away - that all the hard work I'd put into school for all those years, culminating in a bachelor's degree with highest honors, couldn't possibly put me into a job where people looked at me like I was an idiot eight hours a day unless I had, in fact, made a mistake.

So enough of that. I'm going to worry that I'm failing no matter what I do, it's just my nature. But I don't need a job to reinforce that worry so very strongly.

But now I have things to look forward to. On Saturday, I'll be moving into the real grown up person apartment my roommate and I found. It's beautiful, and it's going to be clean, and OURS in a way no place other than our flat in London, perhaps, has been yet. I'm starting a new job on Monday, which hopefully will not be quite as soul-crushing as the last one. I'm making progress on editing The Long Road Home. And my school friends, those who haven't graduated yet, will be back in Ithaca in a few weeks' time.

I have things to look forward to again. Things to be excited about. I've got an apartment to decorate the way I want it decorated. I've got a job where I (hopefully) won't have to wear a name tag and get demeaned by everyone who walks in the front door. I've got a manuscript with edits that are beginning to look manageable rather than impossibly daunting.

I'm feeling a little bit more like I can do this whole "adulthood" thing, rather than feeling like I've failed before I've even begun.

And hopefully, it'll only go up from here.

Let the Editing Begin!

I've begun editing the Irish Novel - aka The Long Road Home. The first 150 pages have been printed and read over, red quill pen in hand, and page 151-278 will be printed this afternoon (I don't want the IC library getting too mad at an alum using their printing services).

I like editing on paper - it's easier to see things on a printed page than on screen sometimes, and somewhat therapeutic to strike through lines of stilted prose with my red pen.

This novel needs a lot of work. Quite a lot. There are a lot of strings to pull, and at the moment they're a little bit more gnarled up than they should be. Character arcs that don't quite add up, a lot of worldbuilding that needs to be in place way before it is, and a lot that needs to be established earlier in order to make the conclusion work. Especially when it comes to my secondary villains.

But I'm really hoping that I can pull this off the way it deserves to be pulled off. I really think this one could mean something, if I can just weave all those strings together in the right way, get all these pieces to really resonate the way they should.

So I'll spend the next few weeks making notes in red pen, rearranging and adding and cutting. After that, it'll be off to the beta readers, who hopefully won't hate it. And hopefully, by the end of it, I'll have a finished product that really shines. The plan is to have it ready to submit to agents by November, when NaNoWriMo is in full swing for all those people insane dedicated enough to try and churn out 50k words in a month.

And then - well, I guess I get to figure out how the heck to squeeze this one into a query letter.

Finished!!

Hello, fair blog readers! My apologies for the late post today. Yesterday was probably the worst day ever. And by ever, I'm not sure I have experienced a worse day in all my 22 years of life. I thought I'd already had the worst day ever, but getting lost in Venice was at least something where I had control over the outcome. Yesterday was not one of those days.

But I survived yesterday and ended it by eating crepes and watching Downton Abbey with my little sister and my roommate/best friend, so that was all right.

Besides, I did not open this blog page to tell you about my Worst Day Ever. I opened it to tell you some NEWS: I finished my novel!!!

Specifically, I finished my first draft of "The Long Road Home," lovingly referred to as "that Irish novel." (Writers: do you also refer to books by things other than their titles, or just me? Mine are always "that French Revolution novel" or "that Irish novel" or "that London Blitz" novel.)

So, what now, you ask?

Well, my little sister is visiting me in Ithaca for the week, so I am taking the week off to hang out with her whenever I'm not at work. After that, I plan on trying my hand at writing a one-act play, because my aforementioned roommate/best friend is an actress currently without any acting to do, and also because why not give it a try?

And then of course there are the edits. So many edits. I'm not sure I've ever been so aware, immediately upon finishing a draft, just how much work needs to go into a piece to make it work the way it should. But I think this one could REALLY work if I get all the little jigsaw pieces to fit exactly as they should.

My new goal is to have it ready to send out into the world by the time many writers are gearing up for the madness that is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November. That should give me plenty of time to do edits of my own, send it out to a beta reader or three, and do another round after that.

So... anybody want to beta read a rather dark fairytale about the Irish potato famine for me? :)

And writers - what is it that you do after you finish a project? Do you do a victory dance? Do you read a lot? Sleep a lot? Catch up on tv? Or do you dive immediately into your next project?

Teaser Tuesday: Making Mischief

Hello, fair blog readers! I have a teaser for you today!

Maire has been told by the Secrets Man to mess things up a bit at the farm, namely, by disrupting a shipment of grain due to be sent off to London. She recruits Caleb and Elizabeth's help, but then finds out that that might not have been the greatest of ideas.

I hope you enjoy it!

-------------------------------------------

“’S’all right, Caleb,” she whispered. “No one will catch us.” 

“Easy for you to say,” he muttered back, barely moving his lips. 

“If you keep looking so guilty, you will get caught. Relax. Everything’s going to be fine. And if they ask you-”

“I truthfully won’t know. I know, Maire.”

The last thing they’d done the night before was ‘borrow’ the hayloft ladders and lug the last of the grain up onto the barn roof. It had been a tricky job, with harrowing moments aplenty – one even left Maire dangling from the gutter for two desperate minutes – but they’d managed it. And then Maire had hidden the ladders as well. 

“Tell me everyplace that I can hide these,” she’d told him, “and then go to bed.”

“Why? Those are heavy, Maire, let me-”

“Because I can already tell you’ll make a dreadful liar, Monaghan. This way, if somebody asks you where the ladders have got to, you can truthfully say that you don’t know.”

“But if I tell you where to hide them-” he’d said, looking puzzled. It really was sweet, how unused to causing trouble he was. Maire had half-wanted to ruffle his hair over it.

“You’re going to tell me a handful of places. And if someone asks you, you can say truthfully that you don’t know, because you won’t know which place I’ve put them in, or if I’ve put them all in the same place or not. And you won’t need to go into detail listing possibilities. You can just say ‘I’ve no idea’ and look sweet like you do, and they’ll let you alone.”

“If you’re sure-” he’d said, still looking skeptical

.

“I’m sure,” she’d answered. He had finally told her some good hiding places, and she then shunted him out the barn door, watching his vanishing silhouette for a long moment before setting to work.  

Looking at Caleb’s pale face in the bright morning sunlight, her stomach gave the same twist of guilt it had once she’d chased him from the barn several hours before. It was wrong of her to drag him into this. It was wrong of her to take such an innocent and involve him in her schemes. No matter that she could not have accomplished this on her own. No matter that he had volunteered even after she had told him to stay away. Caleb had probably never even pulled Elizabeth’s pigtails when they were children, never stolen extra helpings from the kitchen or skipped off working on a particularly fine day to skip stones on the duck pond instead. 

She, on the other hand, had spent her whole childhood playing pranks on her siblings. And she’d spent the past two years stealing where she could, making trouble, as her mother called it. She was good at it. She was good at throwing her elbows and her fists into other people’s faces, never mind that her nose got bloodied because of it. She always came out with that fistful of barley, or that extra blanket, or what have you.

Caleb, however – Caleb was not a fighter. He was not mischievous. There was not a mischievous bone in his whole body. And Maire dreaded the thought of her troublemaking ways crushing his sweetness. 

Caleb was like sunshine. And she – well, she was the hailstorm no one expected and certainly no one wanted.

Teaser Tuesday: Insults in the Rain

Hello all! Well, we have reached That Time of the Semester again - the time when I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to do all the things I need to do. This week is made much more insane but also much more awesome by the New Voices Literary Festival, in which I am a student guide and get to introduce the FIRST EVER YA writer invited as a speaker to Ithaca College. (This was totally my idea. Just sayin.' *toots own horn*)

Anyways, due to the insanity, you guys get a teaser today! YAAAAY. It is from my senior project / that Irish Famine novel. Maire's new friend Caleb is a shepherd at the farm Maire's ended up at, and she's instructed to bring him and the other shepherds dinner even though it's pouring rain. She runs into someone else instead...

Enjoy!

---------------------------------------------

She plodded across the fields again, pushing her sopping hair out of her eyes as she went towards the sheep pastures. The basket was heavy, and she wondered what four shepherds could possibly need that felt like rocks. But she dragged it along behind her, her hands slipping on the wet wicker, peering through the rain-splashed darkness to find some sign of Caleb. 

She walked directly into someone as she was looking the other direction for some sign of sheep or shepherds. 

“Augh – sorry, I didn’t-”

And then she stopped. The figure in front of her in the darkness was not Caleb or Sean or one of the other shepherds. It was not someone from the farm at all.

“You’re capable of apologies,” the Secrets Man said, his smile just visible in the dim light. “Interesting.” 

“What are you doing here?” Maire snapped, stumbling backwards. 

He had no reason for being there, in the rain, of all things. He had no reason for reminding her so starkly of her betrayal, of reeling her in again. She’d thought she was free of him, now he’d trapped her in this place. Thought he was done with her. 

“I just thought I ought to happen by, see how you might be holding up. It is a difficult thing to leave one’s family, after all.”

The smile, all she could see of his face beneath the shadow of his brow, widened slightly. 

“You tricked me,” she snarled, gripping the basket handle tightly, wishing it was something less unwieldy, something she could strike him with. “You said nothing about leaving them forever, you bastard. This is your fault.”

 “You can blame me if you like,” he said, shrugging calmly. “If that’s what makes you feel better about all this.” 

“I don’t-” she stammered, but then she stopped. She didn’t want to tell this man just how much she hated him. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d likely kill him given the chance. And she could not let him know how very broken he’d left her, and just how much she knew this was all her own fault. “Why? Why did you bring me here, of all places?” 

“I knew you’d be treated well, fed, paid, the like,” he answered. “That is what you wanted, wasn’t it? You wanted to save yourself. You can do that here.”

“But – why another Cunningham? Why a place that’ll just feed the English?” 

“Well, I thought you might like to have some familiarity.” 

Maire had no words for him then. There was no phrase found in heaven or hell that would properly express just how much she loathed him. 

“So how are you faring?” 

“Why should you care?” 

“Temper, temper!” he said with a laugh. “I’m merely being polite.”

“Why did you bring Agnes here? Why did you bring any of us here?” 

“Because there’s some good you can do here. I thought she could, but it seems that I was wrong.”

“Maire?” 

She spun round, looking for the sound of the voice, and saw Caleb materializing through the rain. He was going to see the Secrets Man, he was going to find out everything horrible about her. But when she turned again, the Secrets Man had vanished into the dark as easily as a puff of smoke.