NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

The odds are against us. Worse. Look at the headlines of suicide bombers, drive-by shootings, and rape.

We are against us.

There is no director to yell "Cut!" No stunt double to take our place. And no new movie to star in when death swallows our person.

We must be our own hero. Wear our own spandex.

And, if Kate Beckinsale of UNDERWORLD is to be believed, spandex pinches. And so it should.

Pinches remind us that pain befalls us all, to be kinder to someone whose pinched face shows us that the spandex of his/her life is less than comfortable.

The picture of this post comes from Cassandra.

She is a hero, a woman who could have surrendered to bitterness and defeat. But instead she has chosen to choose life, healing others, and going forward.

Though she would deny the heroism of her new life, I consider her a hero. Her trauma is hers to tell. I am just tipping my hat to her heroism.

And in a fashion, all we authors struggling to be published have to be our own heroes.

The odds are against us in this harsh market.

It seems that the motto of agents we approach is : "If I don't want your autograph, I don't want your manuscript."

Even if we self-publish, how do we get our novels to the eye of the average reader? No easy answers there.

But giving up can become an addiction, a way of life. Never surrender. Never yield to despair.

Stumble, yes. Fall, of course. But gather your strength, your wits and get up. You can do it. Others have before you.

Fling the blood and sweat from your eyes and smile wide. You can use those acid feelings searing your will and heart in your writing, becoming a deeper, more perceptive writer.

And more importantly :

if you refuse to give in to bitter hopelessness, you will become a deeper, more compassionate human being.

When you succeed, and you will succeed, you'll be able to thrust out a helping hand and word to someone, down and hurting, who needs a boost back onto the path.

You'll remember how galling the conceited bragging sounded from those who had let their success go to their heads.

If we do make it, the very least we can do is offer hope to those still in the grim trenches.

You'll be able to give them a pat on the back to lend strength to their steps. The pats lower leave to the agents and publishers.
***
And my favorite scene of all the STAR WARS films highlights my thinking {sorry about the foreign subtitles} :

WHY DO WE GO ON?

"Why do we go on?"

As Gypsy, my ghost cat, lapped from my tumbler of ice tea,

I sighed, "There is no certain promise of success.

Often we are mocked by those in our world.

Worse, sometimes we are endured or "forgiven our obsession" by those close to us."

Hemingway looked at me from across the table at Meilori's.

"Backbone," he rumbled.

"What?"

He downed the remainder of his rum. "Backbone, son. In yourself. In your work. That is the key to surviving this 'obsession' of ours."

He set his glass with a thump on the oak table. "Your own backbone is between you and your self-respect. I can't help you there."

He lit a cigar. "But with the backbone of your story or novel ...

The spine of your novel is what you follow on your character’s evolution from what he was to what he becomes. And the change must be big. Why would we follow a bump on a bumpkin’s life?

All good books have one thing in common. They are truer than real life. Why? In good books, anything that doesn’t contribute to the hero’s transformation is edited away.

So find your backbone. What big picture are you painting? Any brushstroke that doesn’t add to that picture, remove.

Ask 5 questions to find your backbone.

1) Who is your hero?

You’d be surprised how many bad novels wobble about in that department, not giving the reader a sure idea of who to root for.

2) What is the problem?

It has to be clear. It has to be primal. And it has to appear insurmountable.

3) How does the story begin and end?

There has to be a “before” and “after” feel to them. The end must be a ringing bell within the heart of the reader.

4) What is the spiritual problem of the hero?

The physical problem must symbolize the spiritual struggle within your hero.

5) What is your novel about?

What is your story’s theme. A young boy learns that true magic lies within. A man discovers lies only make problems; they do not solve them. You get the picture.

What are you waiting for? You want me to lead you to the computer and type the story for you? Writers write. Dreamers dream and die with their dreams."

He pointed the burning end of his cigar at me. "Die on your feet, friend. Die on your feet, your last breath spent living your dream, not pining for it."
***

HOW TO PAY THE TUITION OF REJECTION WITHOUT GOING BANKRUPT

Please vote for THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH for the Gatekeeper Contest :

http://www.wattpad.com/1073509-the-legend-of-victor-standish?d=ud

"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are."

- Arthur Golden


Mr. Golden is the author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. In that novel, he has a passage that translates well to our dealing with rejection and waiting for an agent to accept us :

“From this experience I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there.

What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me?

What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me.

And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”


The answer to me is that each day we dance. Perhaps not to the tune we would wish but to a melody circumstances demand of us. And sometimes it is very hard to keep from tripping over our own feet.

Let's think through rejections and see what they might mean :

1) You write badly.

Ouch. But often we get carried away with the Zen of writing, typing in the moment without a thought of how to be precise with our verbal blows. Sloppy writing is rejected writing.

*) Solution?

Go to the internet or the bookstore or the library. Take books by Hemingway, Chandler, Koonz, King, Updike, Vidal, and Bellows.

Read a chapter from each one. Study their use of specific words. How did they space their paragraphs? How did they convey emotion? { With dialogue, with detail, with what wasn't said?}

See if you can improve on a paragraph picked at random with eyes closed and stabbing forefinger. Can't? Welcome to the club.

Can? Then you've grown more than the writer you were before the rejection.

2) You plot with all the grace of a plodding horse with blinders :

All too often we start with the burst of a scene or of an opening hook. But we have no sense of direction or a map of where we take our hero.

Is it a journey that would entice a reader? Why? Where is the driving momentum that keeps the reader flipping the pages hurriedly?

*) Solution?

Take those same books you've bought or borrowed, looking for the map of their story. How? Look at the jacket blurbs.

Read the summations on the jacket flap. See the primal drives? See them being blocked? See the primal dangers? Read the first chapters. Read the last ones. Compare the two. How did the hero change? How did his/her world change?

Read the first paragraph. Read the last. See the novel's bookends of thought and transformation?

3) Cliche is your first, middle, and last name :

Cliches can creep up on us. If you ever catch yourself writing "like white on rice," lick your forefinger and stick it into a live socket.

That's what the agent reading those words wants to do with you.

Scum layers the top of the lake. The true game fish swirl around deep at the bottom. So it is with the imagination. We want to be writers.

Do we want to be deep-sea explorers? If we want to be offered representation by an agent, we do.

*) Solution?

Read the jacket blurbs again. Sound familiar? Yes, because the plots started out as original but have been copied and copied by TV and Hollywood until the stories are familair.

Throw a what if in your thinking. What if the hitman of your novel is different somehow?

How? Twist the plot on its ear. Your hitman is from the future. Why would someone travel from the future to kill people?

One reason : he hates his life, his world, and the girl who jilted him. So he is off killing his great-grandparents, those of his world's greatest leaders, and those of his girl.

Up the ante :

he falls in love with his own great-grandmother. Whoops. He becomes a bad joke.

The punchline : his own father arrives from the future to kill him. And it turns out that he's not all that wild about his own life up the time stream either. And he wants the hitman's new girl for himself.

4) Nothing is wrong with your novel.

You're just one query in a sea of millions of them. You just didn't wow the agent enough to impress her. Or she was too tired or too caught up with the flow of rejecting every email in front of her.

You query boat just got swamped in the storm of submissions.

*) Solution?

You do all of the above. You strive to grow each writing day into becoming a better author. You keep on submitting.

5) You weren't a good fit for that particular agent.

You failed to do your due diligence. Or you did, and their website hasn't been updated to accurately reflect the changes in their editorial attitude.

*) Solution?

You find more about the next agent before you query. Google not just webpages, agent query, or absolute write water cooler --

you type in the agent's name and follow with "interviews." Read as many interviews with that agent as possible.

You type in "blogs." Read the last ten posts of that agent's blog. Go the archive of her blog. Read the titles of her posts to see if there are any that speak to what you've written.

6) You asked for it :

Yes, you did. Me, too. How?

We became writers. The day we started down that path, we agreed to pay the toll at the gate. The toll? Getting rejected more times than we get accepted. Knowing that there is no promise that we ever will get accepted.

*) Solution?

Be Cortez.

When Cortez landed on the shores of the New World, he caught his men eyeing the ships and the horizon leading home.

He burned the ships.

We have to burn the ship. No retreat. No surrender. Only advance. Stumble. Fall. Get up. Walk on. Hack our way through the agent jungle.

Never surrender. Never give up. Only grow stronger. Grow better. Grow wiser.

Oh, and every now and then, bend down and give the person who's fallen along the way a hand back on his/her feet. Wink, smile, and say, "Hell of a trip, ain't it?"

***
And thinking about never surrendering, never giving up :

GIVING THANKS FOR REJECTION

Yes, Andrea Somberg rejected FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE last night.

I've read it again as a creative writing teacher, finding it a haunting, evocative urban fantasy with action and humor.

But I am prejudiced.

Yet this is Thanksgiving. And there is much to find to be thankful for in even this rejection.

"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are."

- Arthur Golden


Mr. Golden is the author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. In that novel, he has a passage that translates well to our dealing with rejection and waiting for an agent to accept us :

“From this experience I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there.

What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me.

And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”


The answer to me is that each day we dance. Perhaps not to the tune we would wish but to a melody circumstances demand of us. And sometimes it is very hard to keep from tripping over our own feet.

Let's think through rejections and see what they might mean :

1) You write badly.

Ouch. But often we get carried away with the Zen of writing, typing in the moment without a thought of how to be precise with our verbal blows. Sloppy writing is rejected writing.

*) Solution?

Go to the internet or the bookstore or the library. Take books by Hemingway, Chandler, Koonz, King, Updike, Vidal, and Bellows. Read a chapter from each one. Study their use of specific words. How did they space their paragraphs? How did they convey emotion? { With dialogue, with detail, with what wasn't said?}

See if you can improve on a paragraph picked at random with eyes closed and stabbing forefinger. Can't? Welcome to the club. Can? Then you've grown more than the writer you were before the rejection.

2) You plot with all the grace of a plodding horse with blinders :

All too often we start with the burst of a scene or of an opening hook. But we have no sense of direction or a map of where we take our hero. Is it a journey that would entice a reader? Why? Where is the driving momentum that keeps the reader flipping the pages hurriedly?

*) Solution?

Take those same books you've bought or borrowed, looking for the map of their story. How? Look at the jacket blurbs. Read the summations on the jacket flap. See the primal drives? See them being blocked? See the primal dangers? Read the first chapters. Read the last ones. Compare the two. How did the hero change? How did his/her world change? Read the first paragraph. Read the last. See the novel's bookends of thought and transformation?

3) Cliche is your first, middle, and last name :

Cliches can creep up on us. If you ever catch yourself writing "like white on rice," lick your forefinger and stick it into a live socket. That's what the agent reading those words wants to do with you.

Scum layers the top of the lake. The true game fish swirl around deep at the bottom. So it is with the imagination. We want to be writers. Do we want to be deep-sea explorers? If we want to be offered representation by an agent, we do.

*) Solution?

Read the jacket blurbs again. Sound familiar? Yes, because the plots started out as original but have been copied and copied by TV and Hollywood until the stories are familair. Throw a what if in your thinking. What if the hitman of your novel is different somehow?

How? Twist the plot on its ear. Your hitman is from the future. Why would someone travel from the future to kill people?

One reason : he hates his life, his world, and the girl who jilted him. So he is off killing his great-grandparents, those of his world's greatest leaders, and those of his girl.

Up the ante : he falls in love with his own great-grandmother. Whoops. He becomes a bad joke. The punchline : his own father arrives from the future to kill him. And it turns out that he's not all that wild about his own life up the time stream either. And he wants the hitman's new girl for himself.

4) Nothing is wrong with your novel. You're just one query in a sea of millions of them. You just didn't wow the agent enough to impress her. Or she was too tired or too caught up with the flow of rejecting every email in front of her. You query boat just got swamped in the storm of submissions.

*) Solution?

You do all of the above. You strive to grow each writing day into becoming a better author. You keep on submitting.

5) You weren't a good fit for that particular agent.

You failed to your due diligence. Or you did, and their website hasn't been updated to accurately reflect the changes in their editorial attitude.

*) Solution?

You find more about the next agent before you query. Google not just webpages, agent query, or absolute write water cooler -- you type in the agent's name and follow with "interviews." Read as many interviews with that agent as possible. You type in "blogs." Read the last ten posts of that agent's blog. Go the archive of her blog. Read the titles of her posts to see if there are any that speak to what you've written.

6) You asked for it :

Yes, you did. Me, too. How? We became writers. The day we started down that path, we agreed to pay the toll at the gate. The toll? Getting rejected more times than we get accepted. Knowing that there is no promise that we ever will get accepted.

*) Solution?

Be Cortez. When Cortez landed on the shores of the New World, he caught his men eyeing the ships and the horizon leading home.

He burned the ships.

We have to burn the ship. No retreat. No surrender. Only advance. Stumble. Fall. Get up. Walk on. Hack our way through the agent jungle.

Never surrender. Never give up. Only grow stronger. Grow better. Grow wiser.

Oh, and every now and then, bend down and give the person who's fallen along the way a hand back on his/her feet. Wink, smile, and say, "Hell of a trip, ain't it? Let's get her done."

And never tell me the odds. :

{My favorite scene from STAR WARS}

A KNIGHT WITHOUT ARMOR

No, I'm not talking about Paladin.


I'm referring to young Winston Churchill. He was perhaps the only true soldier/journalist of our times.


The Geneva Convention would not have permitted him to bear arms in a war he covered as a journalist.


But that is exactly what he did. And he took a soldier's training and mentality with him as a reporter. Words were his bullets, and scarse was his ammunition. He made each word count. His prose was sparse and lean like his backpack.


In 1894, Winston became a 2nd lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars. In 1895, he spent his first military leave in Cuba for a London newspaper, THE LONDON TELEGRAPH. He spent the next year with his regiment in India. The following year he published his newspaper articles in his first book.


His eye was keen. To stay alive as a soldier it had to be. To keep his prose living, his eye had to be just as discerning.


He kept that eye open for opportunity -- as when in 1898, he volunteered for a posting with the 21st Lancers just before the climax of the expedition to reconquor the Sudan. In the Battle of Omdurman, he participated in the last great cavalry charge of the 19th century.


The following year he again published a series of newspaper articles he had written on the River Wars. He then resigned his commission to focus on journalism.


He went to South Africa to cover the Boer War where he promptly got captured. And just as promptly, he escaped. With a price on his head and not being able to speak a single word of Dutch, Winston made good his escape back to England.


And you nod in appreciation for his heroism, but what about his verbal prowess?


Churchill wrote his own speeches.


The speeches that during the Nazi bombing of London shook the British resolve to its core. With his words and voice alone, Churchill bound England's bleeding heart and fanned the fading embers of courage to a roaring flame :


"You ask, what is our policy?


I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us:


to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime.


That is our policy.


You ask, what is our aim?


I can answer in one word:


It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be;


for without victory, there is no survival."


This is a writer we must listen to when he talks on how to write. If we can catch but a spark of his fire then we will become eagles of prose.


And what does he say of the art of writing?


A short word is good. A short, old word is even better. And there is wisdom both old and new to that sentence. Short words flow easier in our minds as we read. Short paragraphs are easier on the eye.


And the new wisdom to it?


In Google Search, the engine will lock onto the shortest, most used word describing a subject. If we want our novel, our words to pop up when someone Googles, then we should stick to short, well-used words.

And he spoke on a subject tender to most of us struggling writers : criticism.

"It may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things that will only worsen if not dealt with. Courage is what it takes to get up and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen to criticism."

Winston had his thoughts on writing as a whole :



“Writing a book is an adventure.

To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement;

then it becomes a mistress,

and then it becomes a master, and then a tyrant.

The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude,

you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.”


Churchill also likened writing a book to swimming a river.


He described the stimulating and pleasant feeling of getting one's feet and ankles wet, wading in waist deep, and finally kicking off the bottom altogether, striking out eagerly toward the opposite shore.


As the adventure progresses, however, the water can feel colder than it seemed at first and the current more swift than was initially estimated.


Thus, nearing the center of the river may include thoughts about returning to the shore left behind, but looking back confirms that it is now nearly as far away as the opposite shore.


Resolutely gathering up strength, the intrepid swimmer forges willfully toward the inviting but distant shoreline.


The "middle of the middle" is encountered, however, where both the shore left behind and the shore lying ahead seem much too far. Hope drains away and is replaced with feelings ranging from frustration to fear (or perhaps anger or seemingly overwhelming discouragement).


This midpoint Churchill described as "the middle of the middle", and he commented that it seemed to him the most demoralizing and depressing part of the entire journey for the swimmer (or author, or anyone working through any significant sequence, time period or project).


From "the middle of the middle" on, one often has to rely on sheer strength and determination or other resources, as well as a more distant hope, to make it the rest of the way.


Finally, when the swimmer feels totally exhausted, cold, and bedraggled, the opposite shore is encountered (or the hoped for better time that was originally anticipated comes.)


And the swimmer drags up on shore and collapses, not particularly caring whether or not the journey was victorious.


The paradox here is that by the time the goal is reached, or the season passed, the person doesn't really care much one way or the other -- at least in the immediate situation.


So take heart : even a heroic spirit like Churchill's felt as you do now. You are weary, uncertain of success, despondent of finishing.


You will finish the course. You have paid too dear a price not to. And if success is denied you?


There is no failure.


Not to those who leap into the surging currents of writing and keep stroking until their numb feet touch the other shore. No failure. You will have completed what you started.


Your novel is finished. And so what if agents and editors turn aside? Time is a mysterious companion. What is rejected this year may be published next year or next decade.


Just take what lessons you've learned and plunge into the currents again.


Like Winston : keep your prose lean, your eye keen, and your senses searching for new opportunites to step into the spotlight of new agents and new arenas of growth.


Can you smell that cigar smoke? A titan is watching you. Make him proud.
*****************************************************************************

HOW TO PAY THE TUITION OF REJECTION WITHOUT GOING BANKRUPT

"Adversity is like a strong wind. It tears away from us all but the things that cannot be torn, so that we see ourselves as we really are."

- Arthur Golden


Mr. Golden is the author of MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA. In that novel, he has a passage that translates well to our dealing with rejection and waiting for an agent to accept us :

“From this experience I understood the danger of focusing only on what isn't there.

What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I'd thought of nothing but the Chairman even while my life was drifting away from me.

And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give.”


The answer to me is that each day we dance. Perhaps not to the tune we would wish but to a melody circumstances demand of us. And sometimes it is very hard to keep from tripping over our own feet.

Let's think through rejections and see what they might mean :

1) You write badly.

Ouch. But often we get carried away with the Zen of writing, typing in the moment without a thought of how to be precise with our verbal blows. Sloppy writing is rejected writing.

*) Solution?

Go to the internet or the bookstore or the library. Take books by Hemingway, Chandler, Koonz, King, Updike, Vidal, and Bellows. Read a chapter from each one. Study their use of specific words. How did they space their paragraphs? How did they convey emotion? { With dialogue, with detail, with what wasn't said?}

See if you can improve on a paragraph picked at random with eyes closed and stabbing forefinger. Can't? Welcome to the club. Can? Then you've grown more than the writer you were before the rejection.

2) You plot with all the grace of a plodding horse with blinders :

All too often we start with the burst of a scene or of an opening hook. But we have no sense of direction or a map of where we take our hero. Is it a journey that would entice a reader? Why? Where is the driving momentum that keeps the reader flipping the pages hurriedly?

*) Solution?

Take those same books you've bought or borrowed, looking for the map of their story. How? Look at the jacket blurbs. Read the summations on the jacket flap. See the primal drives? See them being blocked? See the primal dangers? Read the first chapters. Read the last ones. Compare the two. How did the hero change? How did his/her world change? Read the first paragraph. Read the last. See the novel's bookends of thought and transformation?

3) Cliche is your first, middle, and last name :

Cliches can creep up on us. If you ever catch yourself writing "like white on rice," lick your forefinger and stick it into a live socket. That's what the agent reading those words wants to do with you.

Scum layers the top of the lake. The true game fish swirl around deep at the bottom. So it is with the imagination. We want to be writers. Do we want to be deep-sea explorers? If we want to be offered representation by an agent, we do.

*) Solution?

Read the jacket blurbs again. Sound familiar? Yes, because the plots started out as original but have been copied and copied by TV and Hollywood until the stories are familair. Throw a what if in your thinking. What if the hitman of your novel is different somehow?

How? Twist the plot on its ear. Your hitman is from the future. Why would someone travel from the future to kill people?

One reason : he hates his life, his world, and the girl who jilted him. So he is off killing his great-grandparents, those of his world's greatest leaders, and those of his girl.

Up the ante : he falls in love with his own great-grandmother. Whoops. He becomes a bad joke. The punchline : his own father arrives from the future to kill him. And it turns out that he's not all that wild about his own life up the time stream either. And he wants the hitman's new girl for himself.

4) Nothing is wrong with your novel. You're just one query in a sea of millions of them. You just didn't wow the agent enough to impress her. Or she was too tired or too caught up with the flow of rejecting every email in front of her. You query boat just got swamped in the storm of submissions.

*) Solution?

You do all of the above. You strive to grow each writing day into becoming a better author. You keep on submitting.

5) You weren't a good fit for that particular agent.

You failed to your due diligence. Or you did, and their website hasn't been updated to accurately reflect the changes in their editorial attitude.

*) Solution?

You find more about the next agent before you query. Google not just webpages, agent query, or absolute write water cooler -- you type in the agent's name and follow with "interviews." Read as many interviews with that agent as possible. You type in "blogs." Read the last ten posts of that agent's blog. Go the archive of her blog. Read the titles of her posts to see if there are any that speak to what you've written.

6) You asked for it :

Yes, you did. Me, too. How? We became writers. The day we started down that path, we agreed to pay the toll at the gate. The toll? Getting rejected more times than we get accepted. Knowing that there is no promise that we ever will get accepted.

*) Solution?

Be Cortez. When Cortez landed on the shores of the New World, he caught his men eyeing the ships and the horizon leading home.

He burned the ships.

We have to burn the ship. No retreat. No surrender. Only advance. Stumble. Fall. Get up. Walk on. Hack our way through the agent jungle.

Never surrender. Never give up. Only grow stronger. Grow better. Grow wiser.

Oh, and every now and then, bend down and give the person who's fallen along the way a hand back on his/her feet. Wink, smile, and say, "Hell of a trip, ain't it? Let's get her done."

All right then. Let's get her done.

ANOTHER DREAM CAST ONTO THE SEA OF FATE

I've just sent out another query to a new agent. This time for my YA fantasy, THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES. I thought it might prove helpful to those of you out there trying to write a query. Take what you find useful and leave the rest to the winds.

So here is another dream cast onto the mysterious sea of fate :

Dear Ms. ______ :

I know you must be weary of TWILIGHT knock-off's. Me, too. But for different reasons. Although I left my teen years some light years ago, I still enjoy the innocence and the angst of YA. I mean, TWILIGHT is a siren song of supernatural, forbidden love. CITY OF GLASS {Mortal Instruments} is a haunting tale of dove and serpent. But guys like to read, too.

Guys want a read that is a wild beast in the mind, surging along with fast-paced plotting and leaping-off-the-page characters. They want to be thrilled, to be made to laugh out loud, and, believe it or not, to be made to think -- usually outside the box -- but is that such a bad thing? So when they browse the teen section in the bookstore and read titles like WHY IS MY VAMPIRE BOYFRIEND PRETTIER THAN I AM?, they must mutter, "Help!"

Help! We've all cried that either mentally or just flat out loud. All of us have faced moments when we longed to be rescued. But mostly we must rescue ourselves. We must wear our own spandex, be our own hero.

Fifteen year old Blake Adamson has no spandex - only a world of nightmare. In the orphanage that is more prison than sanctuary, he retreats into books. But one night, a fire forces him to face reality.

Or does he face reality at all? Is he awake, or is he lost in the fever dreams of a burn-induced coma? Like Alice over a hundred years before him, Blake faces a world of wonder, insanity, and danger. He feels pain. But is that merely from the injuries of the fire as he lies in some hospital bed, or has the world always been larger, more mysterious than he ever imagined?

In the end, he decides reality is what you make it. It doesn't matter if what he sees are delusions within a coma or a wondrous journey through the worlds suggested by quantum mechanics. What matters are the choices he makes, the friends he holds dear, and the pain he can ease.

But then, he meets the enemy in this strange realm that threatens the two girls he has grown to love : himself. How do you battle yourself? And if saving the two girls you love means death for you, what do you do?

THE MOON & SUN AS MY BRIDES is a 90,000 word paranormal Young Adult adventure. I have just finished the rough draft of the sequel, LAST EXIT TO BABYLON. Thank you for the time you've spent reading my query. To get a better feel for my writing voice and my range, you might want to drop by my blog {Yes I have one of those, too.} www.rolandyeomans.blogspot.com

In compliance with your submission guidelines, here is a short sample of my writing. And since you love to take dance classes, here is an excerpt where my hero learns to dance aboard a haunted junk as he sails across the myterious Sea of Fate. He is accompanied by the raven Munnin, fleeing servitude to Odin, the legendary Maori warrior, Hone Heke, and the Sun goddess, Kirika Amaterasu :


What had Napoleon said? That if you pretended long enough, you became what you pretended. Well, then, I would pretend that we would make it out of this mess. All three of us, Kirika, Fallen, and me. I reluctantly pulled back from our kiss, both our mouths wet from it.

"You know what Napoleon told me?"

Kirika slowly stroked my cheek with soft fingers. "What, beloved?"

"That when you fought for love, you always won, even when you lost."

Muninn cawed sharp, "I seem to remember he said --"

Speaking as one, we turned to him and snapped, "Shut up!"

Then, realizing we had acted as one, we both sputtered in sad giggles. Muninn smiled. I nuzzled my head against his. The wise little guy had spoken up on purpose. It was good to finally have friends ... and love.

I wasn't alone anymore.

The next seven days were nothing like the week before it. They were magic, a time of happiness, healing, and laughter. Kirika seemed intent to focus only on the moment, never talking of the past or even acting like there would be a tomorrow. And I was more than happy to let her. But every now and then, I would catch a cloud of darkness flicker across her ivory face. Then, she would notice me looking at her, fling back her long hair, and wisk me away to some new wonder on board or upon the black Sea of Fate. Or more maddening, tease me with playful fingers or lips that would just skim across mine before leaping back in a throaty giggle.

I made a mistake that first day of telling her about my spooky dream. She laughed til tears came to her eyes as I spoke of Muninn dancing a waltz with a tiny Bast. But I left out what the cat goddess had said to him. Muninn glared at me as if willing the whole tale back into my mouth. And afterwards, I wished I could have oblidged.

She insisted on teaching me how to waltz. I was wooden-footed and awkward. Kirika was patient. Muninn was mocking. And Hone? He gleefully helped stoke the fires by playing waltz after waltz on a pipe he magically pulled out of his inside shirt pocket. Slowly, as hour followed hour, I got better until by the end of the first day, Kirika was satisfied enough with my progress to switch to something she called the Rumba.

I protested, trying to keep my voice from sounding like a little girl's, as she demonstrated the swaying hip movements. "I can't move like that!"

She giggled, swaying up to me, pressing her lower body against mine. "Of course, you can."

Hone started to pipe a wild gypsy tune as she smiled, "The Rumba is several dances melted into one. The guaracha --"

Her hips began to gyrate in a way that made me tingle all over. "The Cuban Bolero ---"

She swirled around me, rubbing her, ah, bottom against mine. "And the rural Rumba, which is really a dance of exhibition, not of participation."

Hone stopped playing, "I don't know, honey, your tush seems to be participating with his just fine. Too fine. You know, there're no cold showers on this tub."

She giggled and swirled in front of me. "The steps are quite simple, Blake. Here, see? The rhythm is set in counts of four of equal time. Look, the basic footwork is even more simple. Three steps taken on the first three beats of a measure, with a hold ---"

"A what?," I frowned.

She moved in, kissing me lightly, nipping me sharp on the upper lip as she pulled away. "A hold, silly rabbit. No step on the fourth beat."

"Oh, sure. I knew that."

She laughed throaty, moving her hips in a way that made me want Hone to turn away. "Of course, you did."

Her eyes grew heavy somehow, as her hips began to sway hypnotically. She moved closer and closer to me. She reached out to my hips, grabbed them, then, started moving them in time to her own.

"Let me help," she breathed. "That's right. Move, flow with the music."

"Wh-What music?"

"Can you not feel the pounding of the blood in your ears? Listen. Listen as I rub my hips against yours. Now? Can you hear it?"

I nodded slow, caught in the spell of her brown eyes. "I thought you could. Oh, now, you're doing even better."

She ran her hands up my sides, then back down to my hips, guiding them into hers. "The Rumba is an old, old dance. Long ago, we Ningyo's gave it to the Cubans as a way for the woman to attract and ultimately dominate her man with her ---"

She tickled my ear as she whispered into it, "--- her feminine charms."

Hone was suddenly right by us, pushing us apart. "Alright, that does it. No sex standing up. Not unless I can jump in."

"Hone!," I sputtered.

He winked. "Just kidding, kid."

He laughed deep. "Now, I'll teach you a Maori war dance."

Kirika scowled, "Fitting, old man. I am in the mood for war right now."

He laughed cruel. "Thought you might be. Here, watch how a warrior does it."

He bent in a fluid flourish and picked up his staff. "Can't do it right without the traditional Maori Killing Stick."

He grinned at me. "Last time, I remember doing this, poor Hina lost her hula skirt."

He rolled his eyes. "She almost killed me when she found out I had untied the knot when she wasn't looking."

He spun his staff in a blur. Twisting at the hips, he jumped and spun in the air like a jungle cat, landing like one on the balls of his feet. Jungle cat? My scalp began to prickle at a ridiculous idea. But he spun me around, up, and over his shoulder, then stomped happily with both feet. He broke out into a roaring chant.

"Kamate. Kamate.

Ka Ora. Ka Ora.

Tenei te tangata

puburuburu

nana nei i tiki mai

I whakawhiti te ra

Upane Upane

Whiti te ra!"

Thanks to Solomon's gift of Tongues, I knew what Hone was singing. And singing in not a bad voice either. Kirika wasn't so blessed. She pouted.

"It is impolite to sing so we cannot understand. For all we know, you could be shouting the recipe for penguin soup."

He laughed and twirled her in a square dance kind of circling loop. Despite herself, Kirika giggled, caught up in his genuine lust for life and the dance. He swung about and, dropping his staff, looped his right arm through mine. Then, we found ourselves skipping and dancing all about the deck as Hone bellowed in English this time.

"It is Death! It is Death!

It is Life! It is Life!

This is the hairy one, (he mussed my wild hair as he sang those words),

Who caused the sun to

shine.

Abreast. Keep abreast!

The rank. Hold fast!

Into the sun that shines."

Hone swung us all about, while impossibly stamping his feet merrily and shouting, "Kia korero te katoa o te tinana. (The whole body should speak.)"

"What you said," giggled Kirika.

Hone swept us around some more as he bellowed out again :

"Ringa pakia

Uma tiraha

Turi whatia

Hope whai ake

Waewae takahia kia kino."

Kirika punched him in the ribs, and he chuckled out :

"Slap the hands against the thighs. (Which he did gleefully.)

Puff out the chest. ( I thought Hone's shirt buttons would pop off.)

Bend the knees. ( I almost fell as he dragged us down with him.)

Let the hip follow. (He frowned as Kirika swayed much too sexy.)

Stamp the feet as hard as you can. (We all laughed as we did just that.)"

Hone yelled, "Now, the pukana." (And he dilated his eyes like a guy with a thyroid condition.)

As Kirika pulled away giggling, Hone laughed, "Next, the whetero!"

And he stuck out his tongue so far I thought he was a human lizard.

Kirika folded her arms. "By no means! I am quite careful where I stick my tongue." (And she gazed at me in such a way, I tingled in places I hoped Hone didn't notice.)

"That's alright, honey," smiled Hone, slapping, puffing, bending, and stamping away. "The whetero can be only done by men."

Her eyes narrowed. "Oh, really?"

She stuck out her tongue right at him, looking not a bit fearsome, but like a mad little girl.

He reached out and swung her in a happy circle. "Yeah, who cares about centuries of tradition when I can finally see that cute little tongue of yours. Ouch!"

She had kicked him in the shin. And Hone added a few new dance steps to the Peruperu, the war haka of the Maori. He glared at her.

"You know, princess, there's the potete that only women can do."

She looped her arm back with his and smiled like a happy cat with canary feathers in her mouth. "Oh, and what is that?"

"The closing of the eyes -- like you're gonna do now!"

And with that, he swung her over his shoulder and around his waist to set her right next to me with a thud.

She steadied herself against me with a shaky hand. "No, I think I'll just do the whetero again."

And she proceeded to stick out her tongue at him, lunging in a blur and slamming a foot right into his other shin. "Oh, look, Blake, some more new steps for us to learn."

And she spun me around, leaping up and down, rubbing her own shin bone. "I like this new step!"

"I hate it," Hone grumbled, then held his sides laughing.

He reached out and hugged the two of us. "Now, that's how the Maori dance!"

***

I am a former high school teacher, family counselor, and now a blood courier. The last a result of being evacuated from Lake Charles due to Hurricane Rita and having to support myself any way I could. I found I liked the job and the people with whom I worked. I stayed.


Thank you for taking the time to read my query. I would be happy to send you sample chapters or the full manuscript. I hope that you find some gem in the flood of submissions that pour your way. May your Spring hold only happy surprises with some relief for punished eyes and swamped workloads.

Roland D. Yeomans M.A.

And not to leave my favorite character, Sam McCord left out totally, here is his favorite scene from the ancient movie, THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN :

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

I recieved another rejection this morning. A "Dear Author" impersonal rejection. Ouch. Not surprising considering the odds against me, an unknown. The odds.

The odds are against all of us. Worse. Look at the headlines of suicide bombers, murdering parents, thugs in the shadows. We are against us.

There is no director to yell "Cut!" No stunt double to take our place. And no new movie to star in when death swallows our person.

We must be our own hero. Wear our own spandex. And, if Kate Beckinsale of UNDERWORLD is to be believed, spandex pinches. And so it should. Pinches remind us that pain befalls us all, to be kinder to someone whose pinched face shows us that the spandex of his/her life is less than comfortable.

The picture of this post comes from Cassandra. She is a hero, a woman who could have surrendered to bitterness and defeat. But instead she has decided to choose life, healing others, and going forward. Though she would deny the heroism of her new life, I consider her a hero. Her trauma is hers to tell. I am just tipping my hat to her heroism.

And in a fashion, all we authors struggling to be published have to be our own heroes. The odds are against us in this harsh market. It seems that the motto of agents we approach is : "If I don't want your autograph, I don't want your manuscript."

But giving up can become an addiction, a way of life. Never surrender. Never yield to despair. Stumble, yes. Fall, of course. But gather your strength, your wits and get up. You can do it. Others have before you. Fling the blood and sweat from your eyes and smile wide. You can use those acid feelings searing your will and heart in your writing, becoming a deeper, more perceptive writer.

And more importantly : if you refuse to give in to bitter hopelessness, you will become a deeper, more compassionate human being. When you succeed, and you will succeed, you'll be able to thrust out a helping hand and word to someone, down and hurting, who needs a boost back onto the path. You'll be able to give them a pat on the back to lend strength to their steps. The pats lower leave to the agents and publishers.

And my favorite scene of all the STAR WARS films highlights my thinking {sorry about the foreign subtitles} :

THERE WAS A HERO

Once upon a time there was a hero.

He didn't look like a hero. No stunt doubles took the painful hits for him. No stirring soundtracks played overhead as he struggled alone.

No director stood ready to shout "Cut!" should events get out of hand. No hand stretched out to him when he kneeled on the ground, the breath knocked out of him. Mostly, he ventured on his epic quest alone. Alone. The way dark. The defeats many. The promise of success only a mockery in his head.


Schumel Gelbfisz was born in Warsaw, Poland. As a very young man, he left that city on foot and penniless. After an epic journey, he made his way to Birmingham, England where he stayed for a few hard years, using the Vonnegut-like name Samuel Goldfish. In 1898, he emigrated to the U.S {in steerage.} But fearing refusal of entry due to his quick-silver identity changes, he got off the boat in Nova Scotia, Canada.

He finally made it to New York where he soared in success as a salesman in the garment industry. He was a Jewish Ulysses, living by his wits. He became a naturalized citizen in 1902. Scanning the landscape for financial opportunities, Gelbfisz found one in his beloved past-time, going to the movies. He went into the movie business with a vaudeville performer and a theater owner, using an unknown director, Cecil B. DeMille. As it usually does, business got nasty.

And he left ... the company not the dream. He partnered with the Broadway producers, the brothers Selwyn. They named their studio in a meld of their names : the Goldwyn Pictures Corporation. Wily as ever, Gelbfisz changed his name to Samuel Goldwyn.
He got forced out of the business, never becoming part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

But he never gave up on his dream. He created the Samuel Goldwyn Studio and for 35 years made classics that people like me still enjoy : WUTHERING HEIGHTS, THE LITTLE FOXES, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, GUYS & DOLLS, PORKY & BESS, THE SECRET LIFE OF WALTER MITTY, THE WESTERNER {Gary Cooper}, and the fascinating but utterly silly, THE ADVENTURES OF MARCO POLO {Gary Cooper.} Samuel Goldwyn was a dreamer that refused to quit.

And sadly, most of what he is remembered for is his misuse of the language that was not his first. How many of us who laugh at his words know a second language? And his sharp wit was what enabled him to survive a trek clear across Europe, a journey over the seas, and battles in the shark-infested waters of Hollywood. Often his wit is mistaken for a verbal flub as in : "I don't think anybody should write their autobiography until after they're dead. A hospital is no place to be sick. {And if you've ever been ill in the hospital, you know that statement is oddly true.}

I refused to let his mis-remembrance stand. I wanted to point to him and say, "There. There was a hero."

But more importantly, I wanted to say to all of who struggle against the odds, against the galling weight of rejections, ignoring the stinging voice of inner doubt : "You can be a hero. No, if you are still writing, still submitting to shadowy agents, distant publishers, you ARE a hero. And while heroes may lose, may win, there is something they don't do. They don't quit. Don't you quit. Wear your own spandex. Be your own hero."

NEVER TELL ME THE ODDS!

The odds are against us. Worse. Look at the headlines of suicide bombers. We are against us.



There is no director to yell "Cut!" No stunt double to take our place. And no new movie to star in when death swallows our person.



We must be our own hero. Wear our own spandex. And, if Kate Beckinsale of UNDERWORLD is to be believed, spandex pinches. And so it should. Pinches remind us that pain befalls us all, to be kinder to someone whose pinched face shows us that the spandex of his/her life is less than comfortable.



The picture of this post comes from Cassandra. She is a hero, a woman who could have surrendered to bitterness and defeat. But instead she has chosen to choose life, healing others, and going forward. Though she would deny the heroism of her new life, I consider her a hero. Her trauma is hers to tell. I am just tipping my hat to her heroism.



And in a fashion, all we authors struggling to be published have to be our own heroes. The odds are against us in this harsh market. It seems that the motto of agents we approach is : "If I don't want your autograph, I don't want your manuscript."



But giving up can become an addiction, a way of life. Never surrender. Never yield to despair. Stumble, yes. Fall, of course. But gather your strength, your wits and get up. You can do it. Others have before you. Fling the blood and sweat from your eyes and smile wide. You can use those acid feelings searing your will and heart in your writing, becoming a deeper, more perceptive writer.



And more importantly : if you refuse to give in to bitter hopelessness, you will become a deeper, more compassionate human being. When you succeed, and you will succeed, you'll be able to thrust out a helping hand and word to someone, down and hurting, who needs a boost back onto the path. You'll be able to give them a pat on the back to lend strength to their steps. The pats lower leave to the agents and publishers.



And my favorite scene of all the STAR WARS films highlights my thinking {sorry about the foreign subtitles} :

WHAT IS MORE REAL THAN REAL?

How does a writer make science fiction {or fantasy for that matter} real? This does not preclude movies or TV, for without the script all you would have are good-looking actors gazing at one another -- or into mirrors. More likely the last.

Well, for one thing, you have to make the science plausible. And let's face it, some writers are better sellers of the impossible than others. It's why we have gotten the presidents we have in the past. Let's nail those dastardly speech-writers with rotten tomatoes, shall we?

But all joking aside, the science in the tales has to be internally consistent, not change from page to page. Still more importantly, life must be seen taking its toll. Heads must rock back by the thrust of the rockets. Nausea must make stomachs feel like high-tide in zero gravity spins.

Life must hurt. It does for all of us. It must for the characters we watch or we will not believe in them.

We will not buy a story where there is cause without effect. That is why STAR WARS seems more real {despite its space opera elements} than STAR TREK. The blast doors have scorch marks. The Millenium Falcon has dings and dents. Solo must whallop the door facing of the cockpit to jar the tangled wiring loose enough to fire up the engines. The good guys lose, die, and the survivors feel it in their guts. A father cuts off the right hand of his son. Children, a whole school of them, are cut down by one evil man with a light saber. The evil emperor wipes out the Jedi and rules the galaxy for a generation of terror and oppression.

In life, the bad guys sometimes win. If science fiction or fantasy is to be experienced as "real," then night must fall as it does in the day of each of us. Isn't the true thrill of the dawn based on the depth of darkness to the night preceeding it?

That is why, in a strange way, science fiction can be more "real" than literary fiction. Gene Roddenberry tackled subjects like prejudice, duplicity in war with its betrayed trust of innocents, pacifism in the face of threat, and religious intolerance at a time in the sixties that no other TV show could have done. And because Gene tackled those subjects that were all too real to his audience, the crew of the Enterprise became real to the viewers as well.

VOYAGER lost sight of that fact. One episode whole shuttles would be destroyed, the ship itself broadsided by raking lasers. And the next week, the ship would be spotless and a new shuttle would be gleaming in the bay. BATTLESTAR GALATICA showed us wires hanging from the ceiling of the battered starship episode after episode. Mistakes of crewmen would hound them from show to show. Just like our own mistakes follow at our heels for years. Even more, it showed Mankind's arrogance and callousness coming back in the form of his children, the Cylons, to teach humanity that payback is a terrible thing to waste.

Each of us are heading to that last great Exit. Some of us are closer than we realize. As we walk, are we awake or asleep? THE MATRIX and TOTAL RECALL, to mention two Sci-Fi movies, ask that question of us. It is a question that only we can answer. Good science fiction can broaden our perspective to answer it more truthfully.

Again, I am musing in preparation for my two talks at the CON DU LAC Sci-Fi convention here in Lake Charles in June. Come check out its website, will you? http://www.condulac.net/.

And there was one excellent fantasy movie that connected to viewers because it paid attention to the details of life : its losses, its loves, and its enduring hope that the next dawn would be brighter if only you would not give up.




And readers, never give up. Never. Your dream may be waiting for you just around the corner if you will only take those next few steps. Keep walking. Keep trying. I'll be pulling for you that your dream clasps your hand in the darkness, pulling you into the light, Roland