Little Steps

Sent my query letter off to four agents this weekend. I had no idea when sending them that I was just in time for Memorial Day (different holidays here in Japan--for those of you back in the States, I bet you wish you had Beach Day, huh?).

Anyway, yes, little steps. But always forward.

6th (and last?) Query Post

Okay. Here it is. This is what I'm going with. It's got just one little change over my last post. Tomorrow I'm going to put together a new list of potential agents and set about sending this query out. Wish me luck. Please.

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite, super-powered soldiers. But the Ritual Mask, the Artifact that makes him so powerful, was never meant to last. When it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition open only to the top fighters of the Empire.

To prepare for the competition, Jav must train in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws, a deadly empty hand martial art. With the Ritual Mask sealed away to conserve its power, Jav practices long past dark every day, enduring heavy gravity training and the petty abuse of other students. His only distraction is carving stone flowers for Lili Farina, still in a coma by his hand. But, when Mai Pardine takes over Jav's training, her beautiful performance of the Eighteen Heavenly Claws overwhelms him, and he feels for a moment like he's known her forever.

In an unexpected altercation with a band of alien pirates, Jav is shot through the back, with bits of his chest blown out before him. The seal now broken, Jav loses himself to the mindless fury of the Ritual Mask as it heals him by wrenching every drop of blood from every last pirate, leaving them desiccated, leathery husks. After recovering, the thought of this happening to those close to him--especially Mai--terrifies him so he trains even harder. He's running out of time, though. With the competition still ahead, he must gain control over the Mask and master the Eighteen Heavenly Claws or risk losing more than just his own life.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a work of science fiction, complete at 76,000 words. I chose to submit to you because blah blah blah. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

5th Query Post

Okay. I think this might be it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite, super-powered soldiers. But the Ritual Mask, the Artifact that makes him so powerful, was never meant to last. When it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition open only to the top fighters of the Empire.

To prepare for the competition, Jav must train in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws, a deadly empty hand martial art. With the Ritual Mask sealed away to conserve its power, Jav practices long past dark every day, enduring heavy gravity training and the petty abuse of other students. His only distraction is carving stone flowers for Lili Farina, still in a coma by his hand. But, when Mai Pardine takes over Jav's training, her beautiful performance of the Eighteen Heavenly Claws overwhelms him, and he feels for a moment like he's known her forever.

In an unexpected altercation with a band of alien pirates, Jav is shot through the back, with bits of his chest blown out before him. This breaks the seal on the Ritual Mask, and he loses himself to mindless fury as the Mask heals him by wrenching every drop of blood from every last pirate, leaving them desiccated, leathery husks. After recovering, the thought of this happening to those close to him--especially Mai--terrifies him so he trains even harder. He's running out of time, though. With the competition still ahead, he must gain control over the Mask and master the Eighteen Heavenly Claws or risk losing more than just his own life.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a work of science fiction, complete at 76,000 words. I chose to submit to you because blah blah blah. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

4th Query Post

And again. Sigh. This is what weekends are for.

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite, super-powered soldiers. But the Ritual Mask, the Artifact that makes him so powerful, was never meant to last, and when it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition open only to the top fighters of the Empire.

To prepare for the competition, Jav must train in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws, a deadly empty hand martial art. With the Ritual Mask sealed away to conserve its power, Jav practices long past dark every day, enduring heavy gravity training and the petty abuse of other students. His only distraction is carving stone flowers for Lili Farina, still in a coma because of him. But, when Mai Pardine takes over Jav's training, her beautiful performance of their style overwhelms him, and he feels for a moment like he's known her forever.

Threats at home and away, both inside and outside the ring, test the limits of the seal on the Ritual Mask. A chance encounter with a band of alien pirates reminds Jav what can happen if the seal breaks: besides potentially exhausting its power, Jav loses himself to Mask's insatiable thirst for blood, turning everyone in range into a desiccated, leathery husk. The thought of this happening to those close to him--to Mai in particular--terrifies him and spurs him to train even harder. He's running out of time, though. He must gain control over the Mask and master the Eighteen Heavenly Claws in time for the competition still ahead.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a work of science fiction, complete at 76,000 words. I chose to submit to you because blah blah blah. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

3rd Query Post

A slightly different direction for my nemesis, the query letter.

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite soldiers, given immense power by the Emperor's gift of an Artifact. But his Artifact, the Ritual Mask, was never meant to last, and when it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition to be held in five years.

With the Ritual Mask sealed away to conserve its power, Jav trains in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws on Planet 1287. He practices long past dark every day, taking time only to carve stone flowers for Lili Farina, the girl he accidentally put into a coma on his first day there. Amid punishing training conditions and with the competition still ahead, Jav struggles for control, balancing his raw ability against the latent power of the Mask, which is always there, just outside the reach of his senses. If the seal is broken, he runs the risk of exhausting the Mask completely, but also of losing himself to its insatiable thirst for blood, and that he just can't have. Especially not when fellow student Mai Pardine has started to remind him of a lover he's never met.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a work of science fiction, complete at 76,000 words. I chose to submit to you because blah blah blah. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

Temporal Fugue Kicks Ass!

So I was just out having a drink with my friend Robert and was explaining to him how I wanted to have something in my book that might be to others what Temporal Fugue was to me.

I first read Roger Zelazny's CREATURES OF LIGHT & DARKNESS when I was in junior high way back in 1984 and it blew me away. I think it may have been one of the first books I ever read outside of school, and I was forever trying to find another book like it. I remember I was at Treehouse Books, no longer Treehouse Toys, with my friend Lars and picked it up because of the picture of Anubis on the cover--I'd been intrigued by Egyptian mythology ever since seeing the Tales of the Gold Monkey episode Trunk from the Past (3-Nov-1982)--jeezGOD! why do I remember this and why is the Internet so accommodating?!

At any rate, Zelazny's LORD OF LIGHT is of course comparable and I had heard that Zelazny spoke highly of Steven Brust's TO REIGN IN HELL, and that said book was often compared to Zelazny's more myth-based works. Terribly, terribly disappointed in TO REIGN IN HELL. No offense to anyone, of course.

Maybe you can start to see a trend here. I really like mythology and Zelazny has several books that play with various strains. I really liked THIS IMMORTAL (or AND CALL ME CONRAD), ISLE OF THE DEAD, and A NIGHT IN THE LONESOME OCTOBER--all of them playing with myth in some way, and all of them good, but not quite as satisfying to me as CREATURES OF LIGHT & DARKNESS.

Let's change gears for a moment. I first came across JOURNEY TO THE WEST in college in the early 90s and thought, "Holy crap! This is great!" It was like pulp mythology and it was way different from what we typically grow up with in the West (ironically enough)--well, maybe you in the UK grew up with Monkey, but it the States it was as good as unknown to the general public (or am I crazy here?).

Anyway, imagine my surprise when many years later I reread both CREATURES OF LIGHT & DARKNESS and JOURNEY TO THE WEST and realize that Zelazny has not just used the Egyptian pantheon and shot it into the future, but he's also retold JOURNEY TO THE WEST! Who knew? So the Prince Who Was a Thousand is Tripitaka; Sun-eyed Set is Monkey, of course; Madrak is Pigsy (because he's fat and succumbs to his own weakness); Vramin is Sandy (because he's green--well, in many Japanese versions, Sandy is a kappa--and really quite formidable). Set's boots are a clear analog to the cloud trapeze and his star wand is the pillar that held up the milky way (was it the milky way?) that was really heavy but could expand or shrink to any size. Then, of course, there's Temporal Fugue. God I love that. It's such a cool idea. Monkey could could chew his hairs, blow on them, and cause them to change into copies of himself that would fight his enemies en masse. Set used Temporal Fugue to go back and forth through time to pick moments of himself to build an army to attack his enemies en masse. There were other ways it could be used, too, which make it about the coolest thing ever, but I think you get the idea.

This rambling post has been brought to you by draft beer.

Episode 6: Poseur! There Is Only One Skeleton General!

It all started in 2000. I was living in Seattle and had two great friends, Will and Paul, to bat ideas around with. We were all writing various things; for Paul it was horror, for Will it was poetry, then there were various collaborations we all worked on. For my own part, though, I got it into my head to try to pull off a hoax of sorts. I didn't really think much would come of it, but my plan was to put up a website about this really cool Japanese TV show, with episode recaps and character bios, and hope that word of it spread with people wanting to know more about it. And of course there was no show, not really, just what I had created.
This was the birth of Skull Kaiser: two complete seasons of 22 episodes each, with a third season started but never finished. I kept the website alive when I came to Japan in 2002, but I found out that the page was spreading viruses so I eventually let it die in 2004.

But I couldn't let the idea go. I kept working on it, wondering what final form it would take. I gave up on it for a while, thinking I would focus on other, more important things, but it wouldn't be banished. I realized at some point that I needed to write it as a novel or series of novels, but still wasn't quite ready. The website content was also really the middle of a larger story, what will end up being books 4 & 5 of 6, so I had to think about a beginning.

I changed jobs in 2006, leaving eikaiwa for ALT work and suddenly had lots of free time. The ideas flowed and by April of 2007 I started to work in earnest on THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION, which goes back (at least) to Skull Kaiser's origin. Now there is no Skull Kaiser or Phantasma King or Gear Binder (well, I'll always remember them that way), but the story has really evolved. I finished TAC in October of 2007 and started immediately on the 2nd book, THE GUN GOLEMS, which took me considerably longer to finish. That's because I changed jobs again in April of 2008, moving from being an ALT to managing ALTs and suddenly had NO time whatsoever. Faye was born in February 2009, and she kept/keeps both my wife and I quite busy.

I'm still editing TGG, as mentioned in a previous post, and am taking my time. Also working on that damnable query for TAC. Time is the enemy! Well, it's not the only enemy, but it's the one that counts. But who doesn't need more time? Anyway, that's all for now.

Fall 2009: Query Letter, Wave 1

So in the summer of 2009, with THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION finished and its follow-up on the cusp of completion, I ventured forth into the world of the Literary Agent. Now Janet Reid, the Query Shark, would remind me that Literary Agent is not a proper noun, but for the sake of this post, I think caps are called for.

Now, the list below may not look impressive, but when I first started doing the research, there were very few Literary Agents who 1) accepted email queries and 2) were interested in sf/fantasy. I realize that I'm hobbling myself by sticking solely with email, but living in Japan and querying Agents in the States makes email the sanity-maintaining choice.

The purpose of this post is to remind me that I still have a long way to go and to chronicle the steps as I take them (or as I took them, in this case).

So, here it is: Query Letter, Wave 1

Rejection (Actual)
09/05-09/09/2009 - Nathan Bransford of Curtis Brown (query, 1st 5 pgs)
09/05-09/08/2009 - Sara Megibow of Nelson Literary Agency (query only)
09/05-09/26/2009 - Jennifer Jackson of Donald Maas (query, synopsis, 1st 5 pgs)
10/04-10/06/2009 - Richard Henshaw of Richard Henshaw Group (query only)
10/04-10/14/2009 - Frances Collin of Frances Collin (query only)
10/04-10/30/2009 - Peter Rubie of FinePrint Literary Mgmt (query only)

Rejection (No Reply)
08/23/2009 - Laurie McLean of Larsen Pomada (query, 1st 10 pgs, 2 pg synopsis)
09/20/2009 - Russell Galen of Scovil Galen Gosh (query only)
09/20/2009 - Shawna McCarthy of the McCarthy Agency (query only)
09/24/2009 - Ethen Ellenberg of Ethan Ellenberg (query, 1st chapter, synopsis)
09/27/2009 - Kimberly Cameron of Reece Halsey North (query, synopsis)
09/27/2009 - Lucienne Diver of the Knight Agency (query only)
10/04/2009 - Chris Lotts of Ralph M. Vicinanza (query, 1st few pages)
10/04/2009 - Susan Ann Protter of Susan Ann Protter (query only)

The above agents received my very first attempt at a query which looked, for the most part, something like this:

Dear Agent,

The only thing Jav Holson knows is that whatever cost him his memory would have destroyed him if not for the Viscain Emperor.

The gift of an Artifact--the Ritual Mask--made Jav one of the Empire's super-powered, elite Shades and he gladly fights to further the reach of the planet-snaring Undead Vine that makes up the Viscain Empire. But the Ritual Mask was never meant to last and the Emperor wants to see a continued return on his investment.

To replace Shades lost in recent planetary acquisitions, and to give Jav a chance to live past the death of the Ritual Mask, the Emperor schedules a martial arts tournament, the Artifact Competition, to be held in five years. Since the Ritual Mask is failing and a new Artifact is required, Jav must learn the Eighteen Heavenly Claws to meet and beat the challenges posed by the superhuman fighters he'll be up against. First, though, he'll have to survive his training, the murderous grudges of two of his seniors, a vacation cut short by the protestations of a dead god's ghost, and a pitched battle of fists versus guns with alien pirates.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a 76,500-word science fiction novel, the first in a planned series of six. This is my first novel. Agent-specific reasons for querying this agent. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me

2nd Query Post

I posted the query below here this morning. I've already gotten some really good and useful feedback, and I realize that it's by no means ready, but I wanted to keep track of my progress on the damned thing on this blog. So, without further ado...

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite soldiers, given immense power by the Emperor's gift of an Artifact. But his Artifact, the Ritual Mask, was never meant to last, and when it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition to be held in five years.

To have any chance of success in the competition, Jav must train in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws. With the Ritual Mask sealed away to conserve its power, Jav practices long past dark every day, enduring senior student Mei Pardine's abuse and outright attacks. His only distraction is carving stone flowers for Lili Farina, still in a coma by his hand. But, when Mei's half-sister, Mai, takes over Jav's training, her beautiful performance of the Eighteen Heavenly Claws overwhelms him, and he feels for a moment as if he's known her forever. He can't help but start to have feelings for her.

Together they have a lot of work to do. Besides first raising Jav to Mei's level, they have to survive a vacation turned deadly and be ready for the qualifying preliminary match. Jav unwittingly earns the hatred of one of his teachers and stumbles onto a nest of alien pirates all on his own. Every step forward is a hazard, but Jav has to make it to the competition. He has to master the Eighteen Heavenly Claws if he's to have any future at all.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a 76,000-word science fiction novel. I chose to submit to you because blah blah blah. Thank you for your time and consideration.

I hate query letters!

No further progress on the query letter. It makes my head hurt, actually.

I did get some more work done on the 2nd book. Edits through chapter 14 of 24. Huzzah!

Progress

I had intended to try work on the query for THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION today after leaving it for a few days, but was unable to. Maybe tomorrow.

I did get some editing done for the sequel, though. Almost halfway through. It'll probably need at least another two rounds of edits for cosmetic things and weeding out passive voice where I feel I can, but all goes well.

Hopes & Dreams

Just about anyone who's done any research into finding/landing a literary agent will tell you that it's a bad idea to say that your book is the first in a series in your query--unless you've already been published, maybe. The logic is pretty sound: you have to sell one book before anyone'll even be interested in a series.

I understand and appreciate that.

But, my book is the first in a series. It doesn't need to be a selling point, but it would certainly suck if it was a deal-killer. I'm not there yet, but there are six books that will complete the story I want to tell with Jav Holson. There may be more to follow, but first things first. Six books, each book with it's own plot tied up by the end, and with elements that carry over throughout the series.

I doubt there's anyone out there (reading this, for one, but) who ever saw my first attempt at website about ten years ago. Jav's story started there. He didn't even have a proper name at that time. But the story outlined on that website will be the content of books 4 and 5. Book 1 is complete. Book 2 is undergoing edits. Book 3 is just waiting for me to have enough time to start picking at it. Books 4, 5, and 6 are basically all plotted and just need to be written. And I will write them, if only for me. I want to be able to share them with the world and even--warning: pipe dream ahead--try to earn a living from them. But I know, on some painful level, that that may not be possible.

Qualifying Statement

Always good to have a qualifying statement!

Well, Golden Week is over. I was really hoping to have that query letter whipped into shape and ready to go before my vacation was over, but that was naive.

Anyway, the qualifying statement is that the query in the first post is one of several iterations that I've been working on. If anyone is interested (that doesn't already know), you can follow the progress on Nathan Bransford's forum here. It still needs loads of work and everyone's feedback is helping a lot - I'm just not able to put it into effect somehow. I feel like I keep getting close, but then it eludes me again.

That's all for now. Back again tonight!

First Post!

It was only a matter of time, and after such a long time, this is what I have to show for it (?!). I do like simple (maybe that reads boring), but I'm sure there will be changes with the format over time.

Anyway, for my first post I thought I would share the query letter that's been making my Golden Week a living hell. Well, that's putting it a bit severely, I guess. Take a look and see. Feel free to comment. Hurt me with your feedback to make me stronger! Those of you who manage to stumble across my page, I mean.

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Dear Agent,

Jav Holson is one of the Viscain Empire's elite soldiers, given immense power by the Emperor's gift of an Artifact. But his Artifact, the Ritual Mask, was never meant to last, and when it fails, Jav is a dead man. Unless, that is, he can win a new, permanent Artifact in a competition to be held in five years.

To have any chance of success in the competition, and since any use of the Ritual Mask will burn it out all the faster, Jav must train in the Eighteen Heavenly Claws. His first day at the school on Planet 1287 doesn't go so well, though. He feels like an intruder under the cold stares of the other students, and accidentally putting one of them into a coma doesn't help. He can't seem to get on senior student Mei Pardine's good side no matter what he does, ending up in the infirmary for thirteen days at one point because of her.

But Jav doesn't mind. He takes Mei's abuse, recognizing it rightly as pettiness, and uses it to push himself to improve. Mei's half-sister, Mai, who takes over his training and is the first to be friendly to him, helps. Jav is overwhelmed by her beautiful performance of their martial art and finds that he's starting to have feelings for her. At bottom, though, he has to improve. He has to master the Eighteen Heavenly Claws. He has to be ready for the competition if he's to have any future at all.

THE ARTIFACT COMPETITION is a 76,000-word science fiction novel. I chose to submit to you because of your interest in the genre and appropriate agent-specific reasons. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Me