Update – Not much went on last week. Mostly I worked on paid
stuff. Did a little work on the detective book, played some games (which I’m
not supposed to be doing) and got the lawn mowed. That one knocked me out; we had rain,
drizzle and gloom for roughly a week and a half, then finally it cleared up but
left some tall, thick green behind. But I got it all done, beating out most of
my neighbors. I wasn’t the first, but I was up there in the top five. By the
time Monday rolled around we all had our grass nicely clipped again. The
weather’s gotten chillier. I’m hoping this means the end of the mowing season.
I may need to chop it down one last time as we go into November. I never did
get the yard work done. Maybe next year.
$$$$
Here’s something else I never got done: a first draft of a
book—any book at all—in a month. I was going to do one per month every month
this year. I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I got some bad eggnog at New
Year’s and it gave me delusions. Something gave me a massive block this year,
part of the reason (along with work, financial anxiety and depression) I couldn’t
write as much as I thought I could. So I’m calling it quits. I’ll continue work
on the detective story, even though that’s hit a rough patch. How can you get
blocked on a second draft? I’ve got the bones of the story written; I just have
to dress 'em up nicer and pick better words than what I feverishly scribbled in
longhand in two of those 1-subject school notebooks. But going back over it, I
keep running into mistakes and plot holes that I glossed over the first time,
and I have to straighten everything out so the story still works. It’s a work
in progress, folks. That’s all I can say.
There’s another reason I may have gotten discouraged, and
that’s the current market. Assuming I ever get it done, where do I send it? It’s
not firmly slotted into one specific genre. It’s primarily fantasy, but it’s
also a mystery, a detective story and partially a romance. I tend to refer to
it as my Twilight Zone book, which would put it in the fantasy category.
If I got the right agent, though, I could probably sneak it into mainstream.
That’s where Stephen King’s books were first shelved, even though given the
subject matter (psychic powers, vampires) they should have gone into the
Science Fiction and Fantasy section, where H. P. Lovecraft and his ilk got
lumped in with the elves and the rocket ships. King obviously had an excellent
agent.
I’ve already sent a query to a SFF publisher for one of
their open calls; we’ll see if anything happens. Other than that, I’m
considering Hard Case Crime. Those are straight up mysteries, but they’ve
published a couple of Stevie’s books, so I know there’s leeway. I just have to
hope mine’s good enough.
Why not just query the SFF publishers? Back when I started,
in the distant past, that would have been my go-to genre. But now I’ve hit a
road block that I’ve touched on before, and recently saw an article on the
Internet confirming my worst fears: SFF has essentially been taken over by the
diversity crowd. It’s not just a moratorium on straight white male characters—now
they want to block out the straight white male writers. Only female leads
written by female authors—preferably an author of color and any gender other
than straight—need apply.
(Insert screams and lots of colorful swearing here)
But you’re female, I hear you saying. You’ve got a ticket
in. For the cheap seats, maybe. I’m still white and straight, writing about
straight white male heroes. The problem is, I was planning on using a male pen
name for this book. This book was going to be my entry into the horror genre.
Stephen King doesn’t write the type of books that made him famous any more. I
was hoping my nom de plume could step in and fill the void. But if white
males are being elbowed out of my target genre, what’s a girl-passing-as-a-male-writer
supposed to do?
So why can’t I use my real name? Because about a decade
back, when I switched over to racy romance, I stupidly used my real name as my
byline. Suppose the book sells well and piques people’s interest. They’ll look
up my backlog and find my sex books. The ones with two guys, or one woman and
two guys, or women with vampires and/or werewolves, doing fun activities
together. The kind you don’t want your kids finding out about until they’re at
least 27. I can’t use my initials because that’s what I used for my SFF
stories, and that one YA romance with the vampires that sold maybe five copies,
if that. So my real name and my initial name are both out of the running. And
so’s my whitebread male pen name, it seems.
I’m still going to give it a shot, but my hopes aren’t high.
My goal for 2025 will be to learn how to successfully self-publish.
Although…
Remember that screed I posted a few weeks back, about the
publisher who wanted the male author to make his book “inclusive”? De-age the
characters and play up the romance, only make it gay. I came up with a version
of my book that did exactly that, eliminating all straight white maleness
entirely. I meant it all sarcastically, getting my frustrations out of my
system.
But what if I went ahead and actually wrote that version?
Then queried both versions to the same or similar publishers? Which would sell?
One? Both? Neither? What if I sold one and self-pubbed the other? Would I be
sued for plagiarizing myself?
(Don’t laugh; that happened to John Fogerty, lead
singer/songwriter of Creedence Clearwater Revival. He was called into court for
writing a solo song that sounded too similar to a song he’d written for the
band. It all depends on who owns the rights to what, and he didn’t own the
rights to his CCR songs, even though he'd written them. The law's a funny thing.)
Might be an interesting experiment. It would make me feel
like I’m actually doing something writing-related. I may just fiddle around
with that next year, unless the diversity fad passes in the meantime. I’ve
heard stories of romance e-book writers who do a traditional (MF) version, then
rewrite the story as MM and sell it twice. I considered that, but while
plotting I realized I was coming up with two separate storylines. I can’t even
plagiarize myself correctly.
Or I could just go back to writing sex books. I need to do
something to pay off the credit card before the interest kicks in. It doesn’t
help that more and more outfits are saying, “We accept AI-assisted material.”
Great. Like regular competition wasn’t enough, now I have to contend with
Skynet’s literary efforts. I predicted that on here too. And you wonder why I’m
depressed all the time. I think I’ll go watch TV. See y’all next week.
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