Friday, March 10, 2006
Now For the Real Work
Noël and Heather have both finished reading-and they love it!! I had Heather crying all the way to Houston. She was even calling me at work to tell me about it.
I got brave and sent my first e-mail queries Monday. Tuesday, I actually got a reply from Coral Press, who publishes nothing but musical fiction. He said they were more literary than commercial, but if I'd send the first two chapters, he'd take a look at it. Wow!!
I don't have my hopes up too high, but I figure if he's willing to take a look despite the fact it's not what they normally do, that's a good sign. My query letter must be pretty good. I also think having my degree and being married to a former Coral Reefer band member is helpful.
I posted a short scene-(Randy's walk on the balcony in Las Vegas)-on the Writer's Digest Forum(of course warning readers of the language) and I actually got some positive feedback, which was to tone down the profanity. Sure, I can do that, that's not a problem at all. But they liked the story...and the writing. One person said it was "intriguing and very real." Maybe too real? With all those F-bombs? These are eighties hair rockers. "Fuck" and "Shit" are as common as "and" and "the." But I guess it is pretty intense if you're just the average reader. I read back over the excerpt last night, and there's just one paragraph, Randy's rant, that goes a little overboard but the rest isn't that bad. That's me, though, but I'm used to it. Noël and Heather didn't see that as a problem, either, throughout the book. That was just normal dialogue for the time and characters. I do want the book to have a wider appeal, so I'll be using the backspace bar a lot it looks like.
I got brave and sent my first e-mail queries Monday. Tuesday, I actually got a reply from Coral Press, who publishes nothing but musical fiction. He said they were more literary than commercial, but if I'd send the first two chapters, he'd take a look at it. Wow!!
I don't have my hopes up too high, but I figure if he's willing to take a look despite the fact it's not what they normally do, that's a good sign. My query letter must be pretty good. I also think having my degree and being married to a former Coral Reefer band member is helpful.
I posted a short scene-(Randy's walk on the balcony in Las Vegas)-on the Writer's Digest Forum(of course warning readers of the language) and I actually got some positive feedback, which was to tone down the profanity. Sure, I can do that, that's not a problem at all. But they liked the story...and the writing. One person said it was "intriguing and very real." Maybe too real? With all those F-bombs? These are eighties hair rockers. "Fuck" and "Shit" are as common as "and" and "the." But I guess it is pretty intense if you're just the average reader. I read back over the excerpt last night, and there's just one paragraph, Randy's rant, that goes a little overboard but the rest isn't that bad. That's me, though, but I'm used to it. Noël and Heather didn't see that as a problem, either, throughout the book. That was just normal dialogue for the time and characters. I do want the book to have a wider appeal, so I'll be using the backspace bar a lot it looks like.
// posted by LJo @ 6:34 AM 
