... By Its Cover

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I had an idea for the cover art of MINDER. Here's a mock-up:



Now, I know that, if MINDER is published by a Major Publishing House (cue angelic choir), they'll have a professional design team make up a cover and all. But a smaller house might just go with it. And, if I just punt and self-publish, I'd need to design my own, as well.

So, what do you think? Does the purple work for the text? I originally had it red, but it looked WAY too TWILIGHT-derivative.

Now it may be too derivative of BEAUTIFUL CREATURES. Green, maybe?

Yes, I did the graphic myself. I hand-drew the profiles, then PhotoShopped it into the Gestalt psych-test vase-or-two-faces thing. Do they look like a male and a female?

So, what do you think? Would you pick up a book with this cover? Got any suggestions for improving it? Color choice? Content? If you saw this cover, what would YOU think the book was about?

As an incentive to give feedback, for each comment I receive between now and midnight EST Sunday (one per person, "anonymous" doesn't count), I'll donate $1.00 to Doctors Without Borders for their emergency work in Haiti. Spread the word. Tell your friends.

Cut to a scene in which "Mr. Bear" reads the above and yells, "She promised WHAT?" Then clutches at his chest and collapses. So, for the sake of my husband's peace-of-mind, I'll cap that offer at $100.00.

I got this link (and this idea) from Nathan Bransford's blog. BTW, if you're not reading his stuff, you should be.

Happy Weekend!

Writing Ambiance

Last spring I got a song stuck in my head. "Mad World." It stayed there for days.

I'm from the Eighties, so I remembered the Tears for Fears version. But this one was haunting. Sad. Filled with pain.

It was awesome.

And suddenly, I was in the right mood to start my book.

The two versions that gave me this great feeling were sung by Gary Jules and Adam Lambert. Yes, I have a Ph.D. and I went to Yale and I watch every single episode of American Idol.

There are more of us than you might think.

Current iTunes play counts:
Adam Lambert version: 510
Gary Jules version: 670

I now have about 40 songs in my "Mad World" playlist. They are songs that make me think about certain aspects of the book. They put me into the heads of my characters. They refocus me into the Ganzfield world. I put the playlist on whenever I'm writing; it keeps me in the book.

When a song comes on that pops my attention out of the book, I skip it. If this happens a few times, I take it off the playlist (Sorry, Lady Gaga. I had to take off "Paparazzi"). But most of them have been there for a while, and they now have play counts in the hundreds.

A few recommendations:
Supermassive Black Hole: Muse
Strong: Velvet Chain (I went to high school with the lead singer. Small world)
Cavanaugh Park: Something Corporate
Don't Panic: Coldplay
Fidelity: Regina Spektor
21 Guns: Green Day
She is Love: Parachute
Can't Help Falling in Love: Elvis (lyrics from this one actually appear in the book)
Blue: Eiffel 65 (these are in it, too)
Only You: Joshua Radin
Letters from the Sky: Civil Twilight

I hope that one or more of these songs gets stuck in your head today. Got any others to recommend to me?

Young Adult Language

There are a few things that distinguish "Young Adult" (YA) books from other books. First, the MC is a teenager. The rule here is that kids read up, so 12-year-olds will read about a 16-year-old MC more often than the reverse.

The other distinctions are sex and language. Usually, there's no sex in YA books. If there is, it's not described (e.g., book 4 of Twilight). I've also noticed one other exception to this: if sex in the book is THE BIGGEST MISTAKE OF THE MC'S LIFE. The best example probably is in Cast & Cast's MARKED.

So, there's a not-too-subtle message in the YA lit about sex.

As for language, the line's a little more blurred. Most YA books avoid the hard-core profanity, which for the sake of my readers' delicate sensibilities, I will refer to as the F-word, the S-word, and the C-word. Oh, and the A-hole word.

If you do not know which words I mean, please do NOT email and ask. I'm a lady, and I dare not even type them so far from my fainting couch.

I'm in a grey area in my book MINDER with "God" references in both spoken and internal dialogue. Is it OK for a character to say "Oh my God" when something shocking happens? Is this blasphemy? Will it get my book banned in certain parts of Mississippi? Is that a bad thing?

Interestingly, there's no line on violence. Characters can be decapitated, eviscerated, ex-sanguinated, or otherwise killed and/or mangled in horrible ways in YA fiction, even in books with middle-grade appeal, like Harry Potter.

So, having your MC's BFF sucked dry by a vampire in lurid detail is cool. But don't you DARE let her light up a cigarette.

UNLESS that's the reason the vampire decides to kill her. What can I say? Smoking's a dangerous habit.

Be careful what you wish for

I asked someone to read some pages of MINDER and give me honest feedback.

Yes, I need the honest feedback. It makes the book better. If you're reading this, June, thank you for your feedback.

I'll get right on fixing the problems as soon as I stop rocking and sucking my thumb.

A big part of me honestly wants people to gush embarrassingly and proclaim me the next Rowling or Meyer. Rave reviews are completely unhelpful, but they make me feel better. As Mark Twain once said on my website (and probably somewhere else, too), "I can live for two months on a good compliment."

I actually respect the critics more, though. People who love my book as-is have too-low standards. At least find a typo or something! And it's kinda like what Groucho Marx used to say: that he'd never want to join a club that would have someone like him for a member.

Maybe I need more current references.

Oh, and something's wrong with the TiVo. I think the cat pulled a connector out of the back. However, a broken DVR is an emergency in the middle of a New Hampshire winter, so I hope someone will tell me how to call the National Guard or send up the Bat Signal or something. I'm normally techno-literate, but I have no idea how my husband set this the system up. And the kids will start setting fires or something if we miss "Dinosaur Train," a PBS show that is completely, factually accurate about dinosaurs.

Except for the part where they sing. And ride on trains.

If I were still in college, I'd definitely have a drinking game set up around that show.

I miss college.

That which does not kill you ... still hurts like hell.

Woke up at 5:12am today. Two reasons: my 3-year-old came in to snuggle, and my subconscious is still chewing on the weekend's MINDER comments like they're made of rawhide.

The danger is there, but my MC only knows about some of it. How do I convey the elements of danger that my MC doesn't even know about? In a first-person narrative?

Hmmm...

I'm thinking ...

1) overheard conversations.

2) another character being worried but not sharing his reasons.

And how do I further develop my MC in the opening pages so that people actually care that she's in danger? Particularly when she's not a very warm person? (Red-Green, for all you Porter enthusiasts).

Ooh, and I had a really cool idea for the cover art. At the very least, I think it may become part of the website at Ganzfield.com. I'm just beginning to set it up; I'll blog-brag about it when it's worth seeing.

On an unrelated note, my brother and sister-in-law have a new video up that makes me laugh out loud while simultaneously cringing into the fetal position: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J67xJKpB6c

Chinese for Opportunity

Well, I heard from one of the three agents who have pages.

Grrr...

It is my new mission in life to become so successful that the agent in question RUES THE DAY she passed on MINDER.

"I passed on Minder!" she'll say to the other agents at the agent get-togethers. "That's like passing on Twilight! On Harry Potter!"

And the other agents will shake their heads in mock-sympathy, while silently laughing at her bad judgment.

Yes. Rue the day.

So, yeah. Slight set-back in my plans for world domination.

On the plus side, she gave me lots of notes, and said she loved the voice and the characters.

Just not the setting, and what I had them doing at some points in the plot. Whatever.

The sad thing is that I initially will dismiss her criticisms, but they will gnaw at my subconscious, torturing me in the deep hours of the night, until I actually address them in the manuscript.

Sometimes, being a perfectionist sucks. On the plus side, I get to spend more time in my manuscript, and it will be even stronger when I'm done.

Passive Voice IS Bad

So is over-writing. So is under-emoting. So is telling, rather than showing. I've been deep in re-writes for weeks, and I keep shocking myself with all the times I've broken these rules.

On the plus-side, MINDER's awesome now. Read the new-and-improved first chapters here:

http://www.katekaynak.com/images/Minder2ch.pdf

Another plus, I finally got www.Ganzfield.com. Someone had been trying to sell it for years, since it's so close to the name "Ganzfeld."

So, my plans of world domination continue to move forward. World domination - woo hoo!

Happy MMX!