Making the Trailer

Edited to add: If you can't see the embedded video, please let me know. And, if you can't see it, here's the link.

Movies have trailers. And now books do too. So, I've been thinking that When Mike Kissed Emma needs a trailer too.

What I'm going to share with you here is not the finished product. And will only be available to view until the finished product is ready. But I had so much fun making up this dummy trailer that I thought I'd share it with you.

Rest assured the real thing will be more polished, and it won't feature pictures of my kids. (Though Pippi thinks the one of Harry with the trombone should stay).

How is Writing Like Baseball?

Okay... I have absolutely no idea. But I just spent two hours at a Little League game, I should be able to come up with some analogies.

1) Sometimes you hit it out of the ball park. Sometimes you strike out -- When writing, some scenes can really blow you away, and other times it feels like your writing a grocery list (in other words, not exciting at all - at least my grocery lists aren't exciting)

2) Sometimes you do everything right, but the team gets an out anyway because the coach does something stupid. (Okay, I'm not sure how this relates to writing at all, but our team got an out because the coach helped up the player who had slid into third - can't touch the players). For a writing analogy - you could have a great story that you've perfected over years - but by the time its all ready the market is saturated (vampires, anyone - though I'm not sure we've reached saturation there)

3) Don't throw the bat. If you have a great hit, but you throw the bat you're out. If you write a great story, but get an agent's attention for the wrong reasons (I don't know, like stalking or something) you'll probably lose out on a sale.

So - there are my very lame baseball/writing analogies. Anyone have anything better?

And our team won the game (by one point, despite three outs for kids throwing bats and one out for the coach touching a player).

More Prom Mania

As Climbing Roses continues it's Prom Mania this month head on over there today to see what I had to say about my junior prom. Oh, yeah, there's a picture too - trust me, you don't want to miss this.

Prom Pictures

Over at the Climbing Rose blog there is a contest going on. Some of the Climbing Rose authors have their prom pictures up. Can you identify the author? Guess the year of the picture? Or even the decade? Pop on by and try your hand at it as Prom Mania continues.

And is my picture over there? I'll let you stop and by and see if you can figure it out.

Give Me More

I can still see Mr. Smith, my AP English teacher, rubbing his chin as he would encourage us to dig deeper. "Give me more" he would say.

It was always "Give me more."

Whether it was during class discussion or on something we had written.

He always wanted "more."

There were times I wanted to scream at him: "I don't have any more. I can't go any deeper. That's all there is!"

I think of that sometimes when I get critiques back from my critique groups. They'll have read a scene that I feel digs deep, that is full of emotion, that has tension and whatnot and what do I hear. "You can build this more, dig deeper. Give me more."

And the high school student in me wants to say "No. I can't. That's it. That's as deep as I go."

But high school was a long time ago and I know they are right.

So I dig deeper. I give more. I give till it hurts.

And it always works.

And you know what, Mr. Smith was probably right (darn it) I could have dug deeper back then too.

Queries and Prom Dates

The Climbing Rose Line of The Wild Rose Press is celebrating May with a little Prom Mania. Lots of quizzes and stories and prizes going on at the Climbing Roses blog too, so be sure to stop by.

But over here I was thinking about querying agents and how it is like trying to get a date for the prom.

When prom time came around my senior year of high school I wasn't dating anyone and there was no obvious person that I would go to the prom with. Since I wasn't tripping over offers to go to the dance I decided to take matters into my own hands and ask someone.

But who to ask? There was one boy in particular, who'd already graduated, I'd always liked and it was wonderful to dream about going to the dance with him, but another friend had indicated she was going to ask him, so I didn't.

So I tried to think of other people I'd like to go to. And of course the first step there is dream about what it would be like to be at the prom with that particular person. And I thought of someone who had been a long time friend and it decided I'd really like to go to the prom with him. I dreamed of what it would be like at the dance with him, and it was a nice dream. I screwed up my courage and asked him. And he said no. The dream ended.

And that's how I feel about querying. As long as I don't actually ask, and get a 'no' then I can keep dreaming about what it would be like to have a certain agent be my agent. But once I ask, then they can say 'no' and then that particular dream comes to an end. Of course if I don't ask, they can never say 'yes' either.

And as for the Senior Prom, I did ask someone else, a recent graduate who was also a good friend. We had a lot of fun at the dance and everything worked out just fine.

As for querying, that paid off for me too when The Wild Rose Press offered me a contract for When Mike Kissed Emma.

If you don't ask, no one can say yes. Whether it's prom dates or agents.

The Wild Rose Press turns Three

There's a birthday celebration going on over at the editor's blog for The Wild Rose Press. That's right the company that is publishing When Mike Kissed Emma turns three years old today. Head on over to Behind the Garden Gate and find out all about this wonderful small press.

Enjoy the party!