My Day With Aprilynne Pike

Over the past few years, I've met tons of awesome writers. Some on Authors' Advisory, some at conferences, and some just online. Authors are amazing people and universally fascinating (at least to me).

Only one (so far) has let me hang out with her for a whole day (well, half-a-day). Only one has let me shadow her to a school visit and a library lecture and a book signing. Only one has come to dinner at my house. Only one has let me play with her adorable baby and meet her so-cool mother.

Only one is Aprilynne Pike, #1 NYT Bestselling author of WINGS, SPELLS, and ILLUSIONS, and, most recently, new inductee to the NYT Bestselling Series list.

My friend. (I'm sure she called me that at least once.) :D

You want to touch me now, don't you?

I first met Aprilynne at LDStorymakers 2010, where I was thrilled to see she was my bootcamp instructor. When we ran out of time in our group, Aprilynne graciously met with me during the main conference to give me her notes on my writing sample--and they were SOOO good! She has amazing instincts for what works and what doesn't, and made a beautiful bloodbath of my pages.

When I started hosting Authors' Advisory, Aprilynne was one of the first authors I asked to be a guest, though her call was delayed for several months to coincide with the release of ILLUSIONS and to not conflict with the birth of her baby. Her call, predictably, was sooo informative, and full of her own unique humor. I loved reconnecting with her on the phone.

Right after the call, she announced that she'd be including my town on her ILLUSIONS tour! I was so excited! I contacted her and volunteered to help, and ended up contacting our local library and high school, and putting up flyers about her B&N signing. Can you imagine the thrill as I called people and said "I was talking to Aprilynne Pike...." :) (The school thought I was her publicist.) :D

On the big day, Aprilynne let me shadow her (you know, since I want to do this sort of thing when I grow up). She, her mother, and her daughter picked me up at my house and we went to the high school, where she thoroughly entertained 80 students with a fun exercise on plot and characterization. She'd select a student, have everyone decide who they were, what their power was (since she writes fantasy), and eventually collected enough characters for a mock battle. She effortlessly discussed story structure and conflict, answered lots of great questions, and was finally interviewed by the school newspaper.

After the school presentation, we headed over to the library, where she lectured a small group of librarians, patrons, and a carload of fans who drove (bearing gifts) two hours to see her. She talked about her path to publication--and the many pitfalls she experienced along the way. It was fascinating, and I loved how she didn't let setbacks stop her. She kept writing, kept trying, and eventually made #1 on the NYT Bestseller list.

After the library, it was off to my house, where my wonderful hubby fixed us a venison steak dinner. Aprilynne and I discovered that we have TONS in common, and she gave me advice on my query letter--improving it immensely.

During the book signing at B&N, I played with her baby (continuing my day-long baby-playing campaign) while she greeted her fans (including my boss... who hadn't seen me at work that day...). We had more time to chat, and she ended the night by signing a bunch of their stock. I bought me a personalized copy of ILLUSIONS, and mostly just reveled in the coolness that is Aprilynne.

I had tons of fun, y'all. Not only because Aprilynne is awesomeness itself, but because I learned SO MUCH about how to be a professional author. It looks like tons of fun, frankly, and I can't wait to try it myself.

Thanks, Aprilynne!

LDStorymakers First Chapter Contest: Publishing Practice

When I was a Theatre Arts major in college, I really wanted to be on the acting track. Acting is fun. You get to be on stage, you get to pretend to be someone else, and you get to hang out with other actors, who are almost universally COOL. So, every semester, I would endure auditions for the next semester's acting classes. Every acting class beyond the most basic required an audition with a certain benchmark score. I can't remember for sure (I think I'm blocking), but it seems that I never made it past the basic classes. Maybe to intermediate? Certainly not onto the acting track. *Sigh*

So, I did directing instead, which was also very cool. (I mention this only because, on Saturday, I ran into Shelly, who acted in one of my first directing projects, a Theatre of the Absurd student-written play called The Dialogues of Il and Elle. Shelley was Elle. She was awesome. Still is--only now she's an awesome writer.)

My point is that I'm absurdly practiced at dealing with rejection. With people telling me that I'm not quite good enough. With picking myself up, dusting myself off, acknowledging the subjective nature of the arts, focusing on the constructive parts of the critique, and moving forward. Rejection is disappointing, but hardly crippling. Shrugging is possible. Tears are highly optional.

In that vein, on behalf of the 130+ First Chapter Contestants who waited until the very last award, hoping that our names would appear on the Grand Prize announcement, only to force a smile, clap enthusiastically, and pretend that we knew all along that our chapters weren't good enough... I present my scores. Two years of scores, actually, since I did this last year, too. I'm hoping they'll be enlightening, and will help us all to understand that, like in publishing, not every reader will like our work. But not everyone will hate it, either.

I'm a bit hesitant to post this, since there has been a lot of advice lately on how to respond to critiques and NONE of it has advocated breaking it down on your blog. (Most good advice is to scream in private / ignore in public.) The difference, of course, is that my book isn't published yet. I'm still editing it, so flaws and mistakes are expected, and most importantly, CAN STILL BE FIXED. Please feel free to assume, as you read the following, that I'm going fix every last mistake. All of them. I'm even going to win over 2010 Judge #5.

Before you read the chart, you should know that, in my humble opinion, my first chapter 2011 was vastly superior to my first chapter 2010. When I re-read the chapter before the 2010 conference, I knew I wasn't going to win. This year, I had hope (as you probably noticed). :)

So, voila the spreadsheet!

GEAS is the title of my book. 5 is the maximum possible points per category. The blank was probably an oversight by 2010 Judge #4, and the score of 31 was calculated with a zero in that category, though I skipped the blank when I calculated the average for that category. Even if 2010#4 had given me a 5 in Pace and Style, my 2010 average would only have gone up to 33.2.

Conclusions and things of note:

1. I'm improving overall. (Yay!) My average is 1.3 points higher this year from last year. Therefore, in 5 years, I'll have a perfect score! ('Cause it totally works like that.)
2. Out of 72 scores, I have 25 5's, 35 4's, 8 3's, 3 2's and a no-score. That's 83.3% 4's and 5's, and 16.7% 3-and-under.
3. For every category, taking in both years, I have at least two judges out of nine giving me perfect scores. Yes, folks, fiction is subjective.
4. My strength is in mechanics, described as "grammar, spelling, etc." 2011 Judge #2 told me that I needed to format my page #'s differently, and add my name to the header (which was against contest rules). I can't possibly know if the lack of name got me docked a point, or if it was something else. 2011 Judge #3 only commented "good" on mechanics.
5. My weakness is in Resolution/Read-on prompts. 2010 Judge #5 confessed that s/he didn't like fairy stories, and said "don't take my not liking as a sign that you can't write--you write very very well--I just can't find myself caring. Remember not everyone is going to like my stuff and not everyone is going to like your stuff-tough it out and keep writing to show that jerk judge from Storymakers." It is honestly my favorite comment of the lot. This judge is NOT a jerk. :)
6. Also on Read-on Prompts, 2011 Judge #2 pointed out that, the way I'm currently ending chapter 1 gives my readers an excuse to put the book down. Though other judges were happy with the premise and the set-up and wanted to read more, s/he's right: it's a natural stopping spot, with no compelling reason to turn the page right now. Few first chapter readers will find themselves on my doorstep, begging for the next page. Gonna have to try to fix that.
7. If 2010 had only had four judges (and if #5 was the one missing), my 2010 average would have been 34. Which would have meant I'm now getting worse overall. Which means it's completely useless to agonize about what-ifs. (Also, I would have missed out on the awesome things #5 said.)

At the end of the day (and the blog post), I'm happy to have played. I'm thrilled with the feedback and that it seems that most of the professional reviewers really seemed to like the chapter. They might not have judged it to be "better" than another chapter in my (really big) genre group, but most of them said they'd like to read on. That's good enough, right? So long as we can keep our readers turning pages, we've won.

Hopefully, they'll like it enough when I query to make me ineligible next year....

Sweet Failure

One of the coolest thing about the LDStorymakers conference is how they glorify those who try and fail. The point is that they TRY! Today, they gave awards to those who got the most query rejections this year. Yesterday, they showed an awesome video about famous historical (and local) figures who failed, failed, failed, never gave up, and then, finally, succeeded! The ending line was the best EVER:

Failure: The Secret to Success

Anyway, I won't have time to do a proper blog post, because I'm driving all the way home tonight to surprise my husband (who doesn't read my blog) by arriving a day before he expects me. I'm considering breaking down my First Chapter Contest scores here for you and comparing them with last year's (who'd like to see that?), but I don't have last year's scores with me, and you're really not supposed to react to critiques quite so soon (I got my scores 30 minutes ago).

So I'll just say this: I didn't win. Anything. Except for great critiques from industry professionals. If, by some strange alignment of the stars, one of my judges were to read this blog post, I want to say THANKS! I love your comments, I'm already working on ideas to fix the things that could stand improvement, and I really appreciate your time in judging the contest. (Oh, and I couldn't put my name in the header, because it was against the rules, but I'll absolutely do that when I query.) :)

Anyway, I'll break down the conference later, and you'll definitely want to stop by on Tuesday, when I'll have a HUGE announcement related to Elana Johnson that anyone thinking of querying will want to see.

Now I'm going back to learning. :)

Awards (for me) and the One I REALLY Want

If you're a writer, you know the importance of maintaining some healthy delusions. Odds say publishing a book is about as likely as winning the lottery? Pshaw. That doesn't apply to me! First book never sells? Stephenie Meyer's did! Why not mine? Most published writers can't support themselves (much less their families) on their writing? Well, some of them do! Why not me?

If we believed the odds, we'd never try.

I don't buy lottery tickets because the odds of winning are so minuscule that it's not worth my money--but I've spent thousands of hours creating my own, custom, lottery-ticket novel (no, it's not about lottery tickets). And I believe in it. I do. I think it's a winner.

This is my first full-length novel (though I wrote the first 5 chapters of a few others--do they count?), but I'm still going to query it. In a few more months, when I get it perfect. And I'm going to cross my fingers, send up a prayer, hit send... and then start refreshing my email inbox. Because, you never know, my dream agents might be so enchanted by it, they'll immediately want the full. And I wouldn't want them to wait more than five minutes before they get it, would I? Of course not.

I want to sell it for a lot of money. Because, see, I have this dream life in my head. Free of debt. Living in a house without threadbare carpet. On a ranch, where my husband can raise cows and my sons can ride horses. With an office just for me, where I can continue to write books people will love. Occasionally leaving to attend conferences and to go on tour. To England. To meet my father's family. Perhaps with a baby daughter (or two) in tow. Doesn't that sound good? Would you give that up just because the odds say it'll never happen?

So I say it's okay to dream. Hard cold reality doesn't have any place in my world. Even if this book doesn't sell, the next one will. Or the one after that. Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gol-darn it, people like me!

Don't believe me? I present Exhibits 1, 2, and 3:

From Anita


From Deirdra


From Jenny

I received these three awesome blog awards within the last week. See? I told you people like me! :) Anita and Deirdra custom-made theirs, which make them doubly awesome, but I have to like Anita's best because she only awarded hers to five people--and guess who was #1? ME! :D Are you jealous? 

Of course you are!

You know who I'm jealous of? I've mentioned her before (once or twice): Brodi Ashton. Brodi I-had-to-choose-between-five-awesome-agents Ashton. Brodi I-waited-24-hours-before-I-got-a-preemptive-three-novel-deal-on-my-debut Ashton. Brodi, who is awesome for reasons I can't even tell you about because I promised not to!!! (Yes, you want to be me. No, I can't tell you why.)

Brodi, who, this time last year, won the LDStorymakers First Chapter Contest.

I was in that contest, yo. I sat through the awards ceremony, watched some dude win first and third in my category, and then watched them announce Brodi's name as the Grand Prize winner. And she wasn't even there! Valynne had to go up and accept her laptop for her. I texted her, though. Yeah. Me. 'Cause I'd had dinner with her the night before, and had her cell number. (You want to touch me now, don't you?)

Anyway, I wasn't at all upset, because I'd already read the first page of Brodi's book and she totally deserved it, but it didn't stop me from rejoicing in the fact that she'd likely sell her book before the next contest and would therefore be ineligible for the 2011 contest. (Really, I'm just too good at this predicting stuff.)

So Wednesday, I'm driving down to Utah. Wednesday night, I'm pushing shiny buttons for another Farland's Authors' Advisory Conference Call--this time with Laura Ann Gilman, who's giving VERY timely advice on professionalism, including how to talk to editors (like at conferences and stuff), so you should totally call in with all your questions. Then, on Thursday, I'm picking up Susan Jensen at the airport and attending the Bootcamp at LDStorymakers, where the first fifteen pages of my book will be torn to bloody shreds (if all goes well).  Friday and Saturday are for the conference, where I will network, hob-nob, hand out business cards, meet cool writers, learn some stuff, and hunt down a few future guests for Authors' Advisory. Lunchtime Saturday, they announce the First Chapter Contest Winners. Not that I'm paying any attention to things like that.

So who's gonna be there? If you're going to be there, I'll tell you a secret: I get a text every time someone @'s me on Twitter. Just sayin'. My Twitter ID is @Robin_Weeks. Don't forget the space. I'd love to get together with you. Meet in person. You know, for meals. Really cool classes. (I sit at the front. Always. That's what elbows are FOR.) Or just for pal-ing around in the hall. I'm the one with the obnoxious rolling briefcase. If you trip over something, it's probably me.

Oh, and only the Blog on Fire Award requires me to pass it on. Since I love so many of your blogs, please let me know if you want it--I'll give it to the first five takers whose blogs are over in my blogroll on the left. :)

See you in a few days?