Samuel Park talks Querying & First Pages

Today I'm delighted to welcome Samuel Park, author of the gorgeous debut novel THIS BURNS MY HEART, back to my blog. His novel was just released in paperback and to celebrate, I thought it would be fun to pick his writing-brain about first pages and query letters. Samuel thought it would also be fun to give away a copy of his book, so check the end of this post for details on how to enter.

Me: What is the most important characteristic of a first page?

Samuel: Hi Amy! Thanks for having me on your blog again. Doing your WQI was one of the highlights of my pre-publication experience, so I'm delighted to be back. To answer your question, I would say that, far and away, it's the VOICE. Which, to me, is just another word for style, and how you use sentences and metaphors and language. In other words, it's the DNA of the writer, the way she sounds on the page. It is far more important than action, plot, or even character. If the voice captures the agent and/or the editor, that wins over the first gatekeepers you need to get past to get to your readers! In This Burns My Heart, the first page gives you the sense that this novel has a melancholy air, and the language describes longing, loss, and heartbreak--giving you a good sense of what is to come! 

 

Me: Yes! Come back for my full review of  This Burns My Heart next Wednesday, but let me tell my blog readers now, this novel definitely has a unique and beautiful voice.

 

How much did your first page change from querying to the final product?

Samuel: It didn't change a lot, because by then I had already worked on it for a while. The first chapter of the book had changed numerous times before, and it was really tricky to capture the narrator's voice. As it is, it's a third person point of view, mostly describing what the character does and sees. It's very visual, which I happen to like, since I'm a very visual person, but other people like having other senses emphasized. I have poor sense of smell, for instance, so my novel, one may notice, rarely describes what rooms smell like. The prose is also very quick and spare, giving you a sense of the character's thoughts and her environment, without dwelling too much on either.   

 

Me: What was querying like for you? Can you give us a brief timeline?

Samuel: Querying is not fun. Not fun at all. I'm amazed any writer doesn't just jump off a cliff during it. It was certainly the most stressful period in the entire process for me. Part of the reason is this: there's no standard procedure for it. Some agents ask for the first five pages, some ask for a full, some ask for 20 pages. Now, you'd think the agent who asks for a full is more interested than the one who asks for five, but that's not always true. So you essentially have to reinvent the wheel with every single interaction. It's like being in a crazy Indian market in the 1920s with everyone screaming at the same time, and no one can make any sense of it. From the time I finished the book to the time I found my agent Lisa, it took me about six months. Now, some people will say that's not a very long time, but when you're going through the process, it feels like forever.   

 

Me: Ha ha! I love the analogy. Any query letter wisdom you'd like to share with us?

Samuel: I would say to imagine that you're writing the description in the book jacket. But not one of those catchy one-sentence ones, but those that really describe the essential plot of the book. Also, focus on the thing that is unusual or different about your book. That process, by the way, can lead to real discoveries, and you figuring out what is the book that you really wrote, as opposed as to the one you meant to write. The interesting thing, though, is that people obsess so much about query letters, but the truth is that by the time you get to that stage, your book's fate has already been decided. You've already committed to a plot that may or may not be marketable; you've already amassed whatever other writing credits. It's a bit like writing up a CV. By the time you write it, you've already lived the life that shows up on it. So I've always felt that I wish we could write the queries first, and then the book! Finally, I would make sure the agent can get a sense of your voice, and how you put together sentences. A query letter is also a writing sample, and your style is just as important as the contents!

Thanks again for hosting me, Amy! 

 

Me: Thank you so much for being here and for your wonderful answers, Samuel! If you'd like to be entered in the drawing for a paperback copy of This Burns My Heart (US residents only, please), simply leave a comment in the section below. If you spread the word through your blog, Twitter or Facebook, I'll give you extra entries, so let me know in the comments section. 

This contest will run until next Wednesday (April 4) , when I'll review This Burns My Heart and announce the winner of the giveaway. Best of luck!

Expressions

We're back from the fabulous wedding weekend and now I'm scurrying to unpack and get a few things done before Thursday when spring break starts for my kids.

I read this old saying this morning and I thought it might strike other writers as it struck me:

"Impression without expression causes depression."

We have to find an outlet for the truth impressed upon our lives.

I'm afraid I'm pretty boring. I just write. I do dabble in scrapbooking and quilting occasionally, but that's only for my kids, so they'll have something "made by Mom" to take with them into adulthood. And I guess I sing, but I'm no songwriter.

How do you express your impressions? Do you have more than one way?

Lucky 7

My lovely sister-in-law ("the other Amy Sonnichsen") is getting married this weekend, so we're heading out of town for the wedding. Things are busier than normal for sure. Not only do we  have packing and primping to accomplish (and the very-important question of which pair of shoes will go best with my dress!), but today we're having all our heating ducts cleaned after the great toilet overflow.

Meanwhile, this Lucky 7 bit-of-fun has been circulating the blogiverse, so when Sarah Pearson invited anyone who hadn't been tagged yet to join in, I jumped at it the opportunity for a short, fun post. I've loved reading other excerpts from people's novels, so I'm taking a deep breath and diving in.

 Here are the Lucky 7 guidelines:

1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WiP
2. Go to line 7
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences or paragraphs, and post them as they're written
4. Tag 7 authors

Here's my 77th page, 7th line, 7 paragraphs, from my currently-shelved-awaiting-revision novel RED BUTTERFLY:  (and, of course, Blogger has done something ridiculous with my formatting!)
“Would you do that with Madison—give her to your next door neighbors and send money every month? Would you even think of doing that?”
“Of course not!” 
“Then why are you telling me to do it?”
“Because she’s not your daughter!” Jody cries. “And you need to get a life!”

I wrap the pillow around my face, up to my ears, but there’s no need. The conversation ends abruptly. The bedroom door opens and Mom stalks in. I can hear her raspy breathing through the semi-darkness as she clicks the door shut behind her. The lights from the opposite building cast strange shadows across the bed, lighting Mom’s face in an artificial glow. She blinks in the dimness, her face haggard, jaw slack. She looks as if she’s lived a thousand years since this morning. 

“You heard all that,” she says when she sees me awake.

I bury my face again. The bed creaks as Mom crawls over it. She wraps her arms around me and hoists me over so I’m bundled on her lap. “I wanted to be the one to tell you,” she says. “About Daddy. I’m angry with Jody for going behind my back—” She chokes on tears and I bury my face in her bosom, against the cotton of her blouse. “This is a hard problem, Kara, but we’ll figure something out. I don’t want you to be afraid.”

Have you played Lucky 7 yet? If not, consider yourself tagged!

More on Diversity & Hacky Sacking

Thanks for the great discussion last Thursday about ethnic diversity in Young Adult novels. A couple more thoughts:

• It's interesting that several of us felt insecure writing other ethnicities into our books because we were afraid of "getting it wrong." That's a valid fear when we consider that other ethnicities have different cultures than our family culture. But what if we're writing about, say, Americans or Canadians, or any resident of a country with a diverse population? Does that change anything? I'm Polish American. Would an Irish American feel nervous writing about a character like me? I guess it depends on how I was raised. If I were from a Polish neighborhood in Chicago and if my Polish-speaking grandmother lived with us, then yes, that Irish American writer better know something about Polish culture. But if I grew up in Suburbia, Anywhere, USA, the fact that I'm part Polish wouldn't play as big a part.
• With this said, it seems like our fear of "getting it wrong" stems from a fear of being labeled racist. If our ethnicity is different from our protagonist, we might worry that we'll be judged for any flaws we give that character. 
• And then there's the fear of stereotyping. Say we have a Chinese-American protagonist who plays tennis and gets straight A's in school and her biggest fault is that she studies too much and cares too much about her grades. Uh. No. That's a HUGE Asian-American stereotype. We fall into stereotypes when we're afraid of really getting to know our characters. Maybe we're afraid to make our Chinese-American protagonist a drug dealer because we might offend Chinese-Americans in general. Or we worry people will think we're trying to say all Chinese-American girls are drug dealers.
• These are valid concerns and it's important to be aware of these issues as we write, but I don't think they should stop us from writing with diversity.
• My challenge to myself, and maybe to all writers, is to allow myself to be color blind in that first draft. Craft your interesting, fascinating, flawed protagonist and then, later, decide on the color of her skin. Would that change your book at all? Isn't it fair to assume that a fourth generation Korean-American is just as American as a fourth generation Italian-American? If there are details to tweak, there's time to tweak, but if we're worried about stereotypes, perhaps this could be a way to combat them.

Thoughts? Am I way off with any of this? Anything you'd like to add?

Speaking of ethnically diverse novels, I'll be hosting Samuel Park on my blog next week. He'll be sharing some writing wisdom with us to celebrate the paperback release of his debut THIS BURNS MY HEART. There will also be a little giveaway involved that you writers will love, so please stop by.

And last, but certainly not least, the Hacky Sack Club is going strong with two more members! I am working on my Wall of Shame Fame, but co-founder Janet already has hers up (because she's awesome that way). I'd publicly like to welcome our new victims members:

• Leigh T. Moore who charmed us all with her fabulous juggling video (though she did not juggle the cat)
• Melissa Sarno who wowed us with her hacky-sacking-while-speaking-Hindi video

The goal of the Hacky Sack Club is to bring a little silly community to the normally solitary lives of writers. If you'd like to join, you can read all about it >>here<<. Any weird talent accepted!

Where are the Asians in Contemporary YA?

I hope you all had a chance to read Ellen Oh's post about Why the Pretty White Girl YA Book Cover Trend Needs to End.

And I hope you all entered Adam's and Victoria's book giveaways to support ethnically diverse book covers.

This issue is important to me, too. A lot of you know I grew up in Hong Kong, which was an amazing place to live and grow. Hong Kong is an incredibly diverse city. My best friends in middle school were from all over the world: Holland, Australia, Burma, India, Sri Lanka, Portugal and England. Of course I experienced a good dose of Chinese culture, too, even though my family culture was American.

I grew up as a minority. Maybe that's why I can relate to this struggle and why it makes me sick to my stomach that we would still be trapped in this "covers with white people on them sell books" mentality.

Add to that, my oldest daughter is ethnically Chinese and, at ten years old, she's about to plunge into the world of Young Adult fiction. She's an avid reader. What is she going to find when she gets there?

Middle grade novels have been great. I love the diversity in middle grade. One of my daughter's favorite authors, Grace Lin, just came out with DUMPLING DAYS, and my daughter ate it up (pardon the pun). She was delighted with this book.

But where are the YA books like DUMPLING DAYS? Not that we can ONLY relate to books about people of our same ethnicity, but I find the "white-out" disturbing. And that my daughter might think the only heroines  allowed to be Asian have to carry a sword and possess Ninja skills. (I'm definitely NOT against Ninja skills or Asian protagonists having them. It's awesome. Ninja skills are always wonderful.)

I guess I'm speaking to my own genre here: Contemporary Young Adult. That is, realistic stories with teenaged protagonists. Where are the Asians in contemporary YA?

I was racking my brain for YA novels I've read with Asian protagonists. I haven't read either of the books Adam's giving away: Cindy Pon's SILVER PHOENIX or Malinda Lo's HUNTRESS, though PHOENIX has been on my radar for awhile. But neither of these are contemporary YA. Don't get me wrong, I'm still so glad they exist. If anything, I'm just frustrated with my own little section of the book store.

(Note: I love that BESTEST. RAMADAN. EVER. has a Syrian-Iranian American protagonist. That's movement in the right direction!)

Now I'd like to hear from you (really, I do!):

• Can you think of any other YA books, especially in the contemporary group, that feature Asian protagonists? (Let's stick with YA. There are a lot of adult books and middle grade book examples.)
• What can we DO about this lack? 
• My knee-jerk answer to this question is, since we're writers, WRITE with more diversity. The covers can't reflect diversity if, in our mind's eye, all we see are blonds and red-heads. Here's my humble attempt: My WiP's main character is half-Asian-- her mom is Vietnamese-American-- and my currently-resting WiP has a Chinese protagonist. Obviously, there's no guarantee either of these books will ever see the light of a bookstore shelf. Still, there's the effort to make a change, right?
• But here's another weird spin-off question related to my last point: I'm not Asian. I may feel Chinese in some ways because of my upbringing, but is there a problem with non-Asian writers writing Asian characters? I've considered using "Lin" to replace my middle name "Lynn" in my pen name, just to give myself some instant credibility ... but I decided that might be slightly deceitful. *blush*

Tell me your thoughts, please. Don't hold back. We need to talk about these uncomfortable issues if there will be change, and honesty is the first step. I realize I've been all over the place with this post. I hope you can find my pulse in it, though.

Twenty Things

1. Life has been taking me for a spin lately.
2. I've been sick for a week. I was very sick last week. On Tuesday I spent the afternoon passed out on the bed with a fever, letting my poor children fend for themselves. The only thing that worked in that scenario was that Baby was sick, too, so she came to bed with me. Otherwise, the whole "fending" thing could have involved plunging down stairs, choking on Polly Pocket shoes, or running with scissors. Thankfully, everyone survived.
3. Even though I'm getting better, I'm still not feeling great, and I'm also behind on EVERYTHING (so, sorry I've been so bad about replying to your wonderful comments on the last post!). 
4. On Friday, our toilet clogged, which was not unusual. 
5. But then someone must have flushed it again and it overflowed. When I got back from someplace during the day, I saw it was overflowing, but it didn't look too bad.
6. The reason it didn't look too bad was because it was draining into the bathroom heating duct.
7. I could not get the toilet unclogged.
8. Even when I turned off the water, the toilet kept leaking. 
9. The toilet water in the heating duct leaked into our storage room in the basement.
10. The dashingly handsome sidekick spent basically all weekend on his hands and knees doing things to our toilet, and the plumbing under the toilet. 
11. We've turned off our central heating until the whole thing has a chance to dry out....
12. Which means we're wearing five layers of clothes in the house. 
13. Still, thank goodness it's spring.
14. And thank goodness for scented candles.
15. The old toilet is in the bathtub.
16. The new toilet is in the living room. 
17. The little girls are still blowing snot bubbles. 
18. Spring Forward was not good timing. I REALLY needed that extra hour this weekend and I'm kind of pissed at the government for taking it away from me. (That's about as political as I'll ever get, people.)
19. For Thursday I promise you a much happier (or at least more interesting) blog post, in which I discuss this post by Ellen Oh about the shocking lack of diversity on YA book covers, with nods to Adam Heine and Victoria Dixon who are helping make waves about this issue by giving away books with ethnically-diverse covers. The book giveaways are still going, so click through to enter!
20. How did you spend your weekend? 

Why Fiction?

"We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of the things we feel after reading a great work is 'I have got out.' Or from another point of view, 'I have got in'; pierced the shell of some other monad and discovered what it is like inside ...  In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in a Greek poem, I see with a thousand eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do." 

~C.S. Lewis

Do you ever wonder why fiction exists-- why you write or read it? I love Lewis's take. Any additional thoughts?

WiP Monday: Because I Don't Post on Wednesday Anymore

Oops, was it Monday today? *checks calendar* Yep. *Scurries to write blog post*

Today I'm talking Works in Progress (WiPs) because I haven't blogged about them in awhile.  Probably because I'm now on a Blog Schedule that does not include "WiP Wednesdays." So, WiP Monday it is!

I have three WiPs in three different stages of development. I've given them all nicknames which may or may not be part of their titles.

1. SEAGULL: This one's almost ready for a secondary round of submissions after a bunch of revisions. She's going to get a title overhaul, too, but I'm not sure what that will be yet. I'm still waiting to declare her perfect-as-possible and then we'll see about finalizing that pesky new title.
2. BUTTERFLY: This is my sweet little book, which unfortunately also happens to be enigmatic. In other words, she doesn't fit where she's supposed to fit. She may not be YA, but she's not MG ... and are coming-of-age stories salable, anyway? All this remains to be seen. For now, she is shelved and waiting to be reborn, like the butterfly that she is.
3. CRAZY: The nickname says it all. This book is crazy, and the main character is a bad girl. I'm having a lot of fun writing her because I'm not a bad girl, but she is also difficult to write for the same reason. I wrote the first draft of this baby during Nano last year, and am writing a second draft now. Let me tell you, it's a complete overhaul. Characters needed to change. A bunch of it needs tossing (and flogging). The whole story needs to be re-imagined. Yeah. But it's fun -- one of my favorite parts of this thing called writing novels. And just to tell you how complete this overhaul is, I'm not even referring to draft one. That was so last November.

 So, how about you? How are your projects going? Anything fun to share?

Romancing the Snow

When bloggy buddy Jen Daiker asked me to read and review the short stories (hers included) in the SNOWBOUND HEARTS anthology, I agreed. Jen is so fun and awesome, of course I wanted to celebrate her first publication.

Full disclosure ... I am not a romance-genre expert. Certain friends told me I should read more romance (for educational purposes, mind you), so I thought this was a perfect opportunity to be educated in another genre AND support a bloggy friend. The problem is, writing a review about a genre you're not well-versed in ... it's a little scary.

But I'm going to do my best. Keep in mind, I'm probably one of the most naive people on the planet (despite the fact that I have five children running around). And yes, I do get sort of middle-schooly when it comes to talking about sex. Giggling. Blushing. The whole bit. 

Thankfully, all that worry was for nothing with SNOWBOUND HEARTS. The stories were mostly playful and lighthearted. One story did seem more serious than the others, but I was delighted with the character development and the setting in that story, so it was just as entertaining.

Every story was unique and I enjoyed the variety of voices. For instance, "Sophie's Snow Day" is a paranormal romance about cat shape shifters (I'd never read a paranormal romance before). Jen's story, "Snowbanked," is a sweet romance about a girl who comes home to find herself. "The White Lion" is set in England and had all the romance and intrigue of old English houses that really appealed to this Downton Abbey nut, while "Winter Twilight" has wonderfully gritty characters and a vivid downtown Seattle setting.

My biggest problem with SNOWBOUND HEARTS was that it's only available digitally. And, of course, I don't have an e-reader. So every time I sat down to read it felt an awful lot like I was working. I would have loved to curl up with these stories on my couch in front of a roaring (gas-lit) fire. Instead, I was forced to sit bolt upright at the computer. Which made it less enjoyable, for sure, because I kept accidentally putting on my editor's cap. But this is not the fault of the anthology, just my lack of gadgets.

If you have an e-reader, though, it's super easy to download SNOWBOUND HEARTS from the Still Moments Ebook store. It's only $3.99, which, when you consider how much content you're getting, is really a steal.

Congratulations, Jen, on your publication accomplishment! I know there's a lot more in store from this talented author.

**

In unrelated, silly news, Janet Johnson and I inducted our first victim member into the Hacky Sack Hall of Shame Fame. Catherine Denton put down her paintbrush and bravely went where no red-dress wearing woman has gone before and not only hula-hooped, but hacky-sacked with her hands at the same time. It's absolutely breathtaking. You have to check it out >>here.<< If you'd like to join the silliness, just email me (address in the sidebar) and I'll tell you how. No hacky sack required. Our motto is: "To embarrassment and beyond!"