I get enough questions about the books I wrote before I sold to humiliate myself here, on this very blog. As I've learned in this business - very few people sell their first or second books. I sold my fourth complete manuscript - which my agent says is totally average. That's right. I'm totally average. I can handle it. Just as long as my first three manuscripts never, ever, see publication.
Because it might help someone - I will tell you about my first, embarrassing attempts at publication.
Number one - Blackheart. Yes. I tried to write a serious, historical pirate book. Mostly this was because I love historical fiction and have a serious thing for pirates. So, thinking it would be really easy, I tried to pull it off. I made many, many mistakes with Blackheart. First of all, I decided to put the book in Georgian England - a time when piracy was pretty much over. Then, I made my hero a swarthy, bald Frenchman. This is due to a fixation with Yul Brynner and a guy who was in my philosophy of art class in grad school. There was this guy (bald) who had a soft, foreign accent. My friends and I imagined him to be an agent in the Mossad, a displaced Italian Count, something like that. At the end of the year, we were very disappointed to discover his name was Nelson and he was the Venezuelan boy toy of one of the professors. That - and we saw his knees for the first time. He had chicken knees - I'm totally serious - and I don't even know what that means.
Another big mistake I made, was that the first half of the book is virtually all description - and the second half is all dialog. And then there was the question of plot...
I thought I would turn that into the first in a trilogy with the second book taking place in Africa. The hero was a missionary - you heard me right - who was fighting the slave trade. The heroine was the daughter of the slave trader. Uh huh. A Georgian book set in Africa. Riiiiiiiiiiggghhhht. It was going to be Darkheart.
Anyway - after several rejections (for which I am eternally grateful now) I decided to try something else. Silhouette had launched a line of adventure books called Bombshell. They claimed they wanted to put ordinary women in extraordinary situations. So I went with a girl scout leader hiking with two teen scouts in the mountains of Idaho where they have a deadly run-in with white supremacists who are planning to gas the NAACP conference in Boise. Needless to say - it was better than book 1, but still pretty awful. And it turned out that the most successful books in the line were not about ordinary women - but about FBI and CIA agents, etc. More rejections followed suit. The name of this train wreck was My Own Deadly Idaho.
My third book was when I first experimented with comedy. The Adulterer's Unofficial Guide to Disney World (I still think it's a great title) came closer to my true voice. Unfortunately, I'd made several mistakes - the biggest one was that both my hero and heroine were married and having a blistering affair at Disney World. You can just smell the rejections.
Even though no one will ever see these books, they were very important to my learning curve. I learned that I can't write something just because I like to read it. I also learned how to write what I wanted to see, instead of what I THOUGHT other people wanted to see.
So there you have it - the sordid truth behind my success. What's in YOUR closet?
"The Assassin"
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
I'll Show You Mine if You'll Show Me Yours - Part Deaux
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
.jpg)
Posts
11 comments:
OMG - I was one of those targeting the Bombshell line back in the day. Then they kept changing the requirements (we want humor, we don't , we want Evanovich, we don't, etc), so I got frustrated and made it into a single title and wala - that's my debut RUMBLE ON THE BAYOU. Which, by the way, was my fourth full-length manuscript, too. :)
Average as well.
That's great! We can be the Average Killer Fiction Divas! I was totally pissed about that line. I loved it at first - but then it just got so unrealistic and ignored the point altogether! Of course, then they dropped it entirely. Oh well.
Les
Leslie,
Loved the post.
We really do grow, don't we?
Crime Scene Christie
Christie,
It's UNREAL to read what I wrote before. It's just a good thing I kept going!
Les
I'm not telling you what's hiding in my drawer but I too am grateful for the rejections!!!
My first published book was my third manuscript - but it was so thoroughly revised it might as well have been my fourth :)
Actually I'm really curious about the Disneyworld one. *LOL*
And the missionary one. *LOL* I probably would have read that one, actually.
Okay, here it is. The Disney World one was fun to write. It featured two people stuck in marriages where their spouses are more interested in their jobs and both bail on the annual family trips to DW. The main characters (who were once lovers, by the way) find themselves (and their kids - am I sick or what?)next door to each other at Disney's All-Star Movies Resort (can you see legal problems for this book?). I know - coincidence be damned. So, they join forces and end up in a rather sexually explicit relationship (a detour from the mild sex in my current releases). My critique partner loved it. I cringe when I see it now amongst the files on my computer.
Oh, that drove me nuts about the Bombshell requirements, too! I kept thinking, "Make up your minds, people!" *g*
Me, too! Me, too, Jana! I initially targeted Bombshell with Calamity Jayne. However, the fact that they didn't even know what they wanted so how could they know it when they saw it tanked my chances.
And get this, Leslie, CJ was my fourth manuscript, as well!
~Bullet Hole~
I must be way behind the learning curve. I sold my 7th manuscript. I won’t even repeat what the first 6 were about. Okay, number 6 wasn’t so bad (STILL trying to sell that one) but the first 5 were all category romance targeted at the Silhouette Desire line. Yeah, I don’t do sweet and loving very well. I’m much better at killing people.
~Gemma
I actually think I might like to read all your earlier books. Now that you have found your voice, you might consider taking the "germs", the basic ideas, and writing polished work. We all have to learn sometime, somehow. At least you didn't quit! My New Years Resolution was to write a book and lose 100 lb. I have lost 65 lb and written 60 pages, thrown up my hands, and said, "What a mess!"
I still think my basic idea (for the book) was good. Rather than try to rework the sixty pages, I think I will use them as fire starters in the wood burning stove, and start all over. Maybe I should spend more time in the planning stages. I heard Barbara Walters last night on TV talking about Rowling. When she wanted to start writing, she was on a train with no materials, so she plotted the entire series by the time she reached her destination. I know Stephen King says he does not plot ahead, but Karen Kingsbury does and says she can write a book in a week! She must have it all figured out if she can do that.
Post a Comment