Category: novel

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Work-in-Progress blog hop!

I know I wrote onIMG_5066 this topic about six months ago, but I’m working on new things, so I said yes to the invitation to share my WIP. I was invited by Laurie Baxter (click here to visit her blog post). Thanks, Laurie!

What is your working title of your book (or story)?
Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News: #2 in the Hot Off the Press Series

Where did the idea come from for these books?
I wanted Veronika to have some more adventures, of course, but my friend Woody Minor told me a true story about a local Victorian house that possibly had Gold Rush coins hidden in the walls. I took that idea and ran with it.

What genre do your books fall under?
Veronika is a mystery. My Hot Off the Press series is suspenseful and romantic, but closer to NA mystery than anything else. You could also call them chick-lit but NA (New Adult) is the preferred term these days.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Veronika Layne chases a story about a Hollywood real estate house flipper, mysterious gold coins, and why someone is buying up old houses on San Pedro Island.

Will your book(s) be self-published or represented by an agency?
Booktrope, a hybrid publisher, is representing my Veronika Layne series, as well as Tongues of Angels.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote this quickly, as a NaNoWriMo project — thirty days! But revisions took quite a bit longer. I revised for several months after that. it’s a short book, just 50,000 words, so it goes fast, both reading and writing.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
I think you can compare Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News with anything that Dick Francis wrote — it has the same steeped-in-her-occupation as Francis’s jockeys or other MCs. You could also compare Veronika with Bridget Jones, for getting into sticky situations and feeling like a flop.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?
My friend Woody gave me the idea, but I have been nurturing Veronika Layne inside of me for some time. She has the characteristics of my daughters — smart, feminist, fun — with the shrewd journalist I longed to be. She has some of my insecurities but she hasn’t yet attained wisdom. I’m enjoying watching her grow as a woman and as a reporter.

I also included a character named Flo who was a real-life sweet friend and neighbor of ours who painted beautiful florals and still lifes. I have several of her paintings. The story about Flo is mostly true. Here’s some of the real Flo’s work:

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I still miss Flo today, and was happy I could include her in this sub-plot about a talented artist who acts as Veronika’s surrogate grandmother. These paintings are in my office and I see and love them every day.

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Third Time’s a Charm!

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Current edition of Tongues of Angels, 2015

You know how it feels when your child attempts to do something, and you know it’s going to be difficult, but you stand back and watch her struggle anyway? And maybe she’s not so successful? And then she tries again, a few years later, and struggles, and is still not completely successful? You cheer her on no matter what, even though you have the gut feeling that she might not make it?

That’s what it has felt like with my first novel, Tongues of Angels. This novel, TOA for short, was my creative thesis in grad school. My poor thesis advisor read it at least three times, and it was a ghastly 500 pages long at the time. I feel for her, I do. I pitched the novel to agents and to more agents, and got lots of maybes but no yeses. I took chunks of it to writing conferences and got a pat from Jane Smiley and a hug from Michael Cunningham, and I had a long correspondence with Ron Hansen in which he encouraged me to push onward.

I workshopped it and book-doctored it, had alpha readers give it thumbs up – and a librarian at the university took it home to read over Christmas break and showed it to her brother who’s a screenwriter in Hollywood. The novel became a story treatment that went the rounds, including landing on Salma Hayek’s lap. I have a check for $1 that is my movie option. If someone bought it I would have received $40,000.

And then – I got divorced, and putting food on the table for my three girls became priority number one. I struggled for a couple of years as an editor at two different weekly newspapers; at the latter one, the Alameda Sun, the owners decided that we should put out some books, to broaden the reach of the publishing company. Who had a book that was ready for prime time? I did. Scarlet Letter Press launched its first book with Tongues of Angels, but in order to broaden the distribution they decided that iUniverse would be the best bet for getting onto Amazon and around the world.

So we did that. Online selling was not huge yet, and ebooks were just a blip on the radar. The book sold some hundreds of paperback copies but not millions. The reviews were very good. The press was outstanding. I did several readings throughout California and got excellent coverage. But I spent most of my time trying to get independent bookstores to carry it, and when they would carry it, would they please pay me? I am still owed, to this day, hundreds of dollars from indie bookstores that never paid for their books.

Ten years later, in 2013, I was in a coalition of independent writing women and we were all publishing amazing work. The indie movement had taken off, had rocketed  into the stratosphere, and I got myself a Kindle and had a revelation. Let’s redo TOA with a new cover and try it as an indie! A fantastic designer, Chelsea Starling, redid the cover for the 21st century, and away we went. Reviews were still excellent, and then I got picked up by Booktrope and they were delighted to republish my older books. They wanted TOA in their stable. So I sent this little baby back through the channels again – same cover, re-edit, proofing, and now, back into the world for a third time.

Is the third time the charm? Maybe.

Here’s the synopsis:

A lifelong vow. A Catholic priest with questions. A penitent woman with a secret past. A jealous friend. The fourth in this lover’s knot? God. A true love story that shocked the Catholic Church, and pulled back the curtain on the priesthood.

Average 4 ½ stars on Amazon.

And here’s what the critics said:

David Baker, Snapshots of A Marriage: “As erotically compelling as the Song of Songs.”

Dan Barnett, Chico Enterprise-Record: “Sexually charged: I was struck by [Park Tracey’s] lush, hothouse, erotic style.”

Christa Martin, Santa Cruz Good Times: “Tongues of Angels swings open the doors to the Catholic Church, lifts up the chasuble and exposes what’s underneath…Her novel talks about all the things [they] hope we won’t talk about.”

Kelly Vance, East Bay Express: “Hot under the collar…A scandalous yarn.”

Jordan Rosenfeld, Forged in Grace: “Julia Park Tracey brings wicked honesty and scathingly hot prose to this soulful novel; with crackling nuance, she seduces readers. Tongues of Angels is both sexy and spiritual.”

 Is this something you might like? Give it a try. 

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Guest Post: Five Things a Day

Here’s my new friend Michelle Chouinard, a blogger who has thrown herself into the world of writing, and has set for herself some attainable goals. What she says here? Do it!
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Today I thought I’d share with you one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve ever read, and why I think it works. I found it about a year ago in one of Lawrence Block’s books about writing; there are several, all useful, but this one snippet has been the most helpful thing I’ve found in them: Do five things every day to move your writing forward.

Hang out with your writer friends! Women from the “To Live and Write in Alameda” celebrate the end of NaNoWriMo together.

What five things? Well, that’s up to you. But do five things, every day, no matter how big or small.

One of those things should be writing, of course. We all know we should write every day. Another of those things should probably also be reading: how lucky are we that we’re in a profession that forces us to read prolifically! Twist my arm, why don’tcha?

But the others are more flexible. Make a new connection on twitter. Read an article about writing on your favorite blog. Spend half an hour researching agents. Look for relevant pins to add to your character board on Pinterest. Have lunch with a fellow writer, to get those creative juices flowing. And so on, and so on.

They should be different things, of course. Don’t write five pages of your book and declare yourself done. Don’t friend five new people on Twitter and go have a snack. Each of these count as one thing.

The things you do will differ depending on where you are currently–if you already have an agent, researching agents doesn’t make sense. If you’ve just had a book published, several of these things will probably involve book promotion. Just make sure to do five, every day.

Why is this so important?

Speaking for myself, I’m the sort of person who would happily crawl into a little cozy writing cave for six months and have no contact with the human race. My significant other would throw me scraps of food and come in for a cuddle now and then, but that would be it and I’d be happy as dust on a tchotchke.

And when I came out of my cave, I’d have lost half of my social media contacts because everyone would have thought I’d gone all Snake Plissken. I’d have missed a ton of new books and interesting articles, which I’d be too overwhelmed to catch up on after the fact. And any interesting prompts or discussions that might have made my writing better would never have crossed my path. I would have also lost valuable time trying to get my other projects out into the world.

It takes time to get things submitted, find an agent, get a book/article/story published; we all know this. You don’t just finish a piece, say “Woohoo!” and flick the “publish now” switch. While you’re sending out those letters and working through the rejections to get to the acceptances, you should be writing your next book/article/story. These things take far too much time to do in a fully linear, non-overlapping way. At least if you want to be successful and have enough money to pay the rent.

I would have also lost valuable time building my platform, something that’s becoming increasingly important for aspiring writers. Blog readers and Twitter followers don’t develop over night, and they don’t take kindly to being neglected for long. At least the ones that involve actual people that you actually want to connect with. Just like a plant, you can’t water them only once every six months and expect them to grow.

And maybe most important of all, while I was in that cave writing, the part of my brain that thinks about all this stuff gently in the background while I work would have had no input. Yep, it’s true, the brain works on problems and processes information even when we’re not thinking about it. Things we’ve read, seen, and done recently prime concepts and knowledge in our minds, keeping it all activated and ready for use when it’s needed. So when we do a variety of tasks over time, we keep our minds efficiently processing whatever particular task we’re focusing on at the moment.

So try it out. Sometimes I’m not as good as other times at remembering to do all five — sometimes I only do a few, and sometimes I crap out altogether. So I’ve created a simple spreadsheet to jot down which things I did each day–this lets me know if I’m slacking off too much for too long, and reminds me to revisit things that I haven’t touched for a while. You know how it is — “Gee, it seems like only a week since I compiled that list of prospective agents, but it’s been a month! I better follow up on that.”

Thank you, Lawrence Block, for the amazing advice. So far, it has served me well, and I have every confidence it will continue to do so. Now where’s my next installment of Matthew Scudder??

Happy writing,

M.

Follow Michelle Chouinard:

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Veronika is free today! Blog Hop Bonus!

Holiday-Gift-Exchange-Book-Lovers-Blog-Hop

Hey everyone! Welcome to the BONUS day of the blog hop! I’m really excited to be tagging along on all the fun and having my very own day.

Are you ready for your free present? Today only (Saturday), my new release Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop, is FREE! You’re welcome, and enjoy.

 

Download Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop for free!

10850780_1525494697701817_1448155720_nDon’t forget to enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card: http://is.gd/Soe6ra

Thanks for stopping by my blog, and enjoy Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop. Some of the other participating blogs are still giving out their free gifts, so if you missed any of the days, go hop through and see what presents you can collect.

Start here: http://skwills.com/fun-stuff-extras/holiday-gift-exchange-book-lovers-blog-hop/    Happy Holidays!

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Five Things I Learned from NaNoWriMo

Winner-2014-Facebook-ProfileI survived NaNoWriMo. What is NaNoWriMo? It was the kooky idea of a handful of friends who challenged each other to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, and that launched an international movement to get others to join in, and now, a dozen years later, NaNoWriMo is a juggernaut where normally sensible people do insane things. Let me tell you about how NaNoWriMo went for me.

I vowed, rashly, to get out of bed at 5 a.m. and write my fingers off every day until I had hit my 50,000 word goal. I planned ahead, writing myself an inspirational note on the kitchen chalkboard (“NaNoWriMo 5am BITCHES!”) and pre-setting the coffee-maker. I pre-plotted a little tiny bit. Like, the first two chapters. After that, I was in the land of Pure Imagination…

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing or a good thing. In NaNoWriMo, the motto is, “No plot, no problem.” Just keep writing. So I got myself out of bed, poured the coffee, wrapped up in a blankie and wrote. And wrote. And wrote.  Things went along pretty well until I got to about 40,000 words, and then I hit The Wall. In NaNoWriMo circles, this is a very common occurrence. About the third week of November, the enthusiasm wanes. The adrenaline wears off. It becomes a slog through mud. A deathmarch toward 50K. I had run out of plot. I had a crick in my shoulder that wouldn’t go away. I was sleeping on a heating pad and popping ibuprofen daily. What time is it? Advil o’clock. I was afraid I was out of story. It worried me. I mean, what if my imagination had run dry?

Then I went to a write-in without my laptop. I took a notepad and a pen and hand-drafted a chapter. Then another. By the end of the two-hour session, I had consumed a Mexican hot chocolate and a currant scone, and drafted the last five chapters of the novel. I went home and hit the laptop. The only day I couldn’t write was Thanksgiving Day, and it was a maddening day, torn between peeling potatoes and vacuuming cat hair and making a cheese platter while my eyes glazed over, thinking of what was in store for my heroine. I tell ya, the life of a novelist is no picnic.

But I finished. November 28, and I slammed the door on this (extremely) rough draft. I’m taking the month of December to let the draft marinate, so to speak, and revisions begin January 1. This, the second volume of the Veronika Layne Hot off the Press series, will be out in spring.

So what did I learn from NaNoWriMo?

1) Goals are important. Set them. Pursue them. Try to make them. Adjust the timeline if you have to. But give yourself something for which to strive, as a writer and as a human being.

2) Don’t live in a vacuum. Pay attention to the world and let it affect your writing. You are not a precious flower under a bell jar. You are a creature of the universe, and your work should reflect that. The Ferguson/Michael Brown case unraveled in November, and I found myself writing some of that passion/compassion into my novel.

3) Pursuant to item 2, go write with friends. Don’t be a recluse. I discovered a handful of women writers in Alameda I never knew, who have — through this firewalking experience — become my friends. I see us writing together and supporting each other’s work in the foreseeable future. And those are Good Things, as Martha Stewart says.

4) Take a walk every day. Whenever I needed to work out a scene or a sticky plot point, I took a walk. The act of moving the body, breathing fresh air and the change of scenery made a huge difference to me and the story.

5) Write a crappy first draft. Don’t sit in judgment of your rough draft. Let it flow, and then revise the heck out of it. Anne Lamott said it years ago, in Bird by Bird: Write a shitty first draft. Don’t edit until you’ve drafted something. In NaNoWriMo, you don’t have that kind of time or luxury. And the good news for writers is that the longer you write, your first drafts will get better, too. You won’t be working with dreck. You’ll be working with a rougher version of the story. And that is an encouraging development.

The result of this year’s NaNoWriMo experience is that I find I’m a better writer than last year, and the year before that. I know how to work out the kinks. I know how to take care of myself in the stress. And I have learned to take friends with me — don’t do it alone. All of these are winning strategies for more than just spewing out a novel in 30 days. I anticipate using my lifeskills for — pretty much — forever.

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Have youIMG_8162 read Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop? It’s online at you-know-where and you can order it from your local bookstore, too. I have to ask, because this is the biggest shopping season of the year. And it’s Cyber Monday today – so if you’re thinking about cyber-shopping, why not pop into Amazon and click, click, click?