Old-O-Rama

This is where the older Blog-O-Rama posts go to retire. This is like the nursing home for old posts. It's about time you stopped by.

Renée Harrell's Old-O-Rama

Most years, we kind of almost succeed...
(Jan. 10, 2010)...in keeping our New Year's Resolutions. This year, we want to eat healthier foods (again), get fit (again), spend our money more wisely (again), save more (again) and get our romance story published. All of the (again) items? Those are Renée's ideas. Harrell will participate wholeheartedly but, secretly, he'll pray for the day when he can sit on the couch, eating chocolate and drinking wine while wearing a newly-purchased Slanket.

The Sell Our Romance! idea belongs to Harrell but this is the first time it's been a Resolution. There are too many things that a writer can't control to make a "we'll get published" vow an actual Resolution. We keep capitalizing "Resolution" so that it seems more important and, therefore, something we need to do. Harrell thinks short, sexy romances are an easy sell -- especially if those romances involve werewolves. To prove it, he's developed a list of e-publishers that are looking for short, sexy romances that involve werewolves.

Believe it or not, it's a looong list. This year, we might actually succeed in keeping one of our New Year's Resolutions.

If we were better people...
(Jan. 6, 2010)...we could do this Blog-O-Rama thing on a daily basis. After all, lots of people update their blogs daily. We are not those people.

We like blogging, we do, but we're lazy. Plus, Renée is busy painting -- her current piece is called Pissed Off and Poorly Used so you know that's not gonna be on postcards any time soon -- and Harrell was tasked with the first round of edits on the Quake book. He's up to page 150 of the thing but that leaves him 80 pages shy of being done. The edit plus the marketing strategy plus the publisher's info sheet(s) all have to be completed by Friday.

Harrell's feeling grumpy. He feels...pissed off and poorly used. (He shouldn't have called Tails when the coin was flipped.)

Renée, on the other hand, feels great. Oh, Pissed Off is a struggle but it's working out. The news that's made her so happy? She received a gorgeous necklace from the marvelous Blood Milk. Blood Milk is also known as J. L. Schnabel, a jewelry maker who's also a painter who's also a writer.

And, did we mention?, Jess Schnabel also manages to update her blog frequently. So, as we understand it: (A) Blood Milk is a writer, something we struggle at; and (b) she paints, which Renée struggles at and Harrell dare not even try; and (c) she makes killer jewelry, which we will never do for a variety of reasons -- including a sore lack of vision and skill; and (d) her pseudonym is more fun than our's and (e) she updates her blog more frequently than we will ever do AND that blog is filled with many, many fun images; and (f) we assume that she's only days away from curing all forms of cancer. Which is a good thing but leaves us envious of her many talents.

If you want to see why we enjoy her work anyway, head over to Things We Like. Sincerely, Renee's new necklace ROCKS.

If you need a friend...
(Jan. 4, 2010)...you'll find us under Facebook as Renée Harrell. Ask to be our Friend and you're in. But only you and you. We don't care about those other guys.

Oh, and we're on MySpace, too. And Crime Space, as well.

Our new publisher asked us to sign up for these things. They want us to explore every marketing option. While we have some doubt that the 13-year old target audience for whis•pers is surfing through the various social network sites and can't wait to befriend a woman with a glass eye in her mouth and her gray-haired cowboy, who knows? Maybe the publisher is right. After all, she's the professional.

(Of course, she's not right! The whole idea is CRAZY! Wake up and smell the coffee, girl!) Actually, some of our published writer friends say she IS right.

Hmmm. Anyway, should you decide to become one of our Facebook/MySpace/Crime Space friends, know that we haven't yet developed that habit of visiting Facebook/MySpace or Crime Space on any regular basis. That will change as our publication date approaches but, for now, we'd rather you stop by here to say hello.

Deal?

With 2010 almost upon us...
(Dec. 31, 2009)...we've decided to be lazy. For today's Blog-O-Rama, we're going with little tidbits of minimal interest. For something more substantial, you'll probably want to head over to a better blog.

Kiva is finally paying dividends. If you want to see what kind of big money returns we're looking at, head over to Random Things and take a look.

We won't be going to the movies tomorrow but we've recently enjoyed Sherlock Holmes -- which is better than its trailer but still ain't all THAT good -- and Avatar in 3-D (which is better than Sherlock Holmes but still ain't all THAT good). If you'd like to start your 2010 with popcorn in your hand, you could do worse than one of these flicks.

We've rewritten our romance novella Wicked Games, adding some depth to our Alpha male and raising the story's word total by a bunch. The best thing about the rewrite? Now we don't kinda like our story; now, we actually like the story a bunch. Which is not a bad way to end the year.

And may 2010 be a wonderful year for us all!

Okay, so we were working on our "Author's Bio"...
(Dec. 27, 2009)...and we suddenly felt very silly. An Author's Bio? From us? Get real.

Who in their right mind would buy this particular novel from us based on our biography? As you no doubt remember (fake it if you don't), whis•pers is a paranormal teen mystery that features our heroine, Ann, and her best friend, Kim, battling a Big Bad that's come back from the grave to kill them. One of 'em, anyway. Since the Big Bad thinks that Ann is the love o' his life, brought back to life and ready for action -- well, he has other plans for her. Which is creepy in its own way.

So. Our target audience is 13 years and older and we have to wonder: Has any teenager, anywhere, decided from the Author's Bio to grab a title? And, if that teenager used our Bio as their tool in choosing a book, then that's a teenager that we want to avoid. The poor soul has some serious issues.

It's not as if we could bail on the Bio, though. Our publisher expects us to provide many things before our teen tale becomes a book. One of these items was the Author's Bio and they asked for it ASAP. So this is what we said:

Renée Harrell is the semi-pseudonym of Renée and Harrell Turner, a wife-and-husband writing team. Their first mystery novel was written under a much more famous pseudonym and was published by Simon & Shuster (USA) and Simon & Shuster UK (Pocket Books) in...um, the UK.

whis•pers is their first Ann Lippens mystery. To learn more about Renée Harrell, their writing projects, the Things We're Doing, the Things We Like, and That Thing We Did go to MarsNeedsWriters.com. To learn more about the next Ann Lippens mystery, ru•mors, contact them through [email protected].

Oh, and about ru•mors, the sequel to the first Ann Lippens mystery? We haven't written a word of it. We've plotted it, we'd love to write it, but we want to know we can sell it, too, before putting words on paper. If the first story does well, then we'll write the second. Until then...it's just a ru•mor.

We no longer have an editor for our novel. But we somehow do have...
(Dec. 22, 2009)...a publication date for whis•pers. You might think, if the book has a publication date, it must need an editor...but you'd be wrong.

Today, we received a e-mail from our publisher. Even though Ye Olde Publisher isn't our editor, she's managed to provide us with our manuscript's first round of edits and she's asked for the Marketing Strategy for the novel. Here's a secret, from us to you: This site is pretty much our entire Marketing Strategy for the novel. We hope you'll tell your friends, they'll tell their friends, and we'll sell maybe four copies of the thing. That is our one great hope for whis•pers: that four complete strangers buy the novel, read the novel and love the novel. We sell those four copies, we're satisfied. At that point, we'll consider our writing career a success.

Since our publisher never comes to Mars Needs Writers, she'll never know how little it takes to make us happy.

(No, idiot, this site isn't the whole of our Marketing Strategy. Not really. As our novel moves closer to reality, we'll do what every other writer does to sell their words. We'll pimp ourselves on MySpace and Facebook, we'll make our friends pimp us on their MySpace and Facebook sites, we'll annoy our acquaintances at the various boards that we haunt, we'll pressure family members into promising to buy electronic First Editions of our book...and, in the course of all of this, we may just spark a few fresh ideas that will actually stir an interest in our work.)

But the big news for today? Our publication date is August, 2010. Yay!

Sometimes, you have to pay it forward...
(Dec. 17, 2009)...which, in our case, meant that we volunteered to read part of someone else's unpublished manuscript and offer some feedback on that person's work-in-progress. Trust us: Unpublished and under-published writers are always looking for a fresh viewpoint on their words. If writers were to rely solely on the opinions of their friends and lovers, they'd be convinced that their every effort was a masterpiece.

That's not because our friends and lovers really, truly think that we've done sterling work. That's because our friends and lovers want to remain our friends and lovers. Keep that in mind the next time you ask someone you like to give you their "honest" opinion.

Unfortunately, this particular manuscript isn't ready for a reader as of yet. In short order, we counted eighteen spelling errors. (And this is a person with Spell-Check. We guess he just wasn't feeling in a Spell-Checking mood that day.) There were errors in format, in grammar, in plotting...and, hand over heart, we're only talking about the challenges we found on the would-be novel's first page.

We plugged on as long as we could, provided our feedback and some encouragement, and decided to stay out of the beta reader game for awhile. At least until next year.

After Luke chewed on our pages, what did we do? Well...
(Dec. 13, 2009)...we went on vacation, away from the internet, computers, and much of the e-civilization. It really had nothing to do with Luke's comments and everything to do with our plans for the month.

On vacation, we discussed our Luke Review. We agreed that Luke had offered some strong ideas and we've made some changes to the manuscript because of those ideas. We really, truly think that our s-f manuscript is finally finished. Until, that is, somebody else comes along and pays us to make whatever other changes are needed.

Aly's Luck goes out to agents soon -- once we decompress from our holiday.

Luke read our sci-fi manuscript. Here's what he said about it...
(Dec. 5, 2009)...the good, the bad, and most of the rest of it. What did we remove from his review of Aly's Luck? Some plot points that he addressed that wouldn't make any sense to anyone that hasn't read the novel. Which is, at this point and time, is -- um, almost everybody.

As much as we'd prefer to share only the good parts version, we can't do that. Not to you and you. So here it goes:

The Luke Review -- Aly's Luck by Renée Harrell
Sometimes you're looking for a serious novel, a piece of fiction that will alter your perceptions and deliver some deeper meaning that will haunt your waking hours. However, when you step away from being overly serious, sometimes you want to read something light, fun, funny even. That, at the beginning, was the goal of Luke Reviews. Yes, some works are more serious than others but they're all meant to be books you pick up for fun, for enjoyment, and that can be appreciated on that level. Therefore, when I was given the opportunity to review Renée Harrell's manuscript, Aly's Luck, it seemed like a perfect match.

Aly is a unique woman on a rather unusual vacation to the Bugworld, a dangerous planet that she seeks out for her thrill-seeking tendencies. Dobbins, crook, cheat, and all-around ruffian, along with his constant companion, the 'changer, Syr, arrived on the world in slightly less glamorous circumstances. As things seem to go wrong for all three of them, their paths become intertwined with each other, as well as with a rather powerful fungus, a ruthless tyrant, and a rebellion in the making, all as our heroes try to avoid slavery or ending up as part of some Bug's next meal.

At first, I was a bit unsure about the novel. The beginning throws you right into the story, which can be a wonderful plot device, but I felt that I was struggling to catch up just a little too much. And, as I was on the verge of feeling comfortable with the story, there was an abrupt shift to a second group of protagonists. I was worried that the plot wouldn't hold up for me and would fall victim to its own fast pace-at-the-cost-of-story.

I couldn't have been more wrong. With only one major stumble in the rest of the text, making me pause to try to figure out if I'd missed something, the story meshed together brilliantly into a fast-paced adventure story, with wonderfully evil villains, fun aliens and, most impressive of all, the humor worked.

Once past the very beginning, you're in for a wonderfully entertaining ride. The story isn't a deep-thinking one but it revels in that and, if you're sitting down to have a good time, Aly's Luck won't disappoint. In the pulp tradition of a plot too zany to question, with black and white characters (because even the thief is truly a nice guy), and that's almost frolic in its telling, this is undeniably a fun story.

The characters are very much not painted in shades of grey, so there is some lack of depth here, but that would likely have ruined the rest of the effect of the novel. Yes, if you pushed too hard, parts of the plot may not have stayed up under the pressure but, frequently, their correction would mess up a lot of the fun parts, creating a conundrum.

Yet I like that. It reminds me of the old science fiction stories and, in particular, movies. It was a lot of fun. It was a light, quick read. If you want a deep, thought-provoking read, you might check elsewhere but if you're seeking sheer entertainment, check out Aly's Luck and you are guaranteed not to be disappointed.
8.5/10

What does Mars need? More things than you ever imagined...
(Dec. 2, 2009)...and we know how good your imagination is.

A Google search of "Mars Needs" brings up nearly two million listings. ("Venus Needs" brings up under 40,000. "Uranus Needs"? Under two thousand. Don't ask why we looked for these things.) Mars Needs Women, the 1960s sci-fi flick that inspired our bowling team, draws the most attention. It was a great title for a bad movie. Shot in two weeks, Mars Needs Women featured bad lighting and chunks of stock footage. But we like watching the flick because we enjoy bad, bad movies.

We've also discovered Mars Needs Moms, a Berkeley Breathed book for kids that will soon be a movie for families. Probe a little further and you'll find Mars Needs Cows/Gears/Millionaires/Catholics/Lunchboxes and Landscape Photographers...we kid you not. The old red planet apparently needs a lot of things.

Us? We only need you and you. And wine. We did mention that, right? Thanks for stopping by.

Here's the scary part...
(Nov. 30, 2009)...Luke Forney has sent words that he's started reading the manuscript to Aly's Luck. (See our Nov. 6, 2009 listing if you wonder why we care.)

Luke has offered to provide his personal feedback on our pages in the form of one of his famous Luke Reviews. He's even willing to let us print a the review on our Blog-O-Rama.

That makes one of us nervous. Time for more wine.

We were delighted to hear...
(Nov. 27, 2009)...from a Fencken. The clever Cynthia Fencken Maynard discovered our site -- and Fencken's Guide to Intergalactic Travel (see below) -- through a Google search. She also provided a little info from the Fenckenipedia: "Did you know that many, many of the Fenckens you find when you google are actually 1 Fencken...my 2nd cousin, Bill, who lives in Arizona. And so does his dad. ALL the Fenckens in the US (and there aren't that many!) are related!"

For some reason, it has made us very happy to hear from a Fencken. The Fenckens are a small tribe (a very small tribe) and we never expected to actually make contact with one of 'em. Even though we don't believe in signs...this seems to be a good sign.

Aly's Luck has caught the attention of the Fencken market. We're guessing -- on publication date, that's one novel sold. Maybe, even, two.

Publishers, are you paying attention?

"How I Became a Famous Novelist"...
(Nov. 24, 2009)...is an absolutely terrific, funny novel by Steve Hely. It's so good that we wish we'd written it (and, of course, SH got his book published in hardcover and paperback so that's a major plus in any writer's world). After finishing the book, we wondered if we might have any writing tips to help our e-audience become Famous Novelists on their own. To our surprise, we actually do.

Writing Tip #1: Know somebody. In our earliest writing days -- and before we sacrificed a few years to the seductive world of teleplays and screenplays -- we were desperate to sell something to somebody. When we read that a book packager was looking for writers, we got excited. We sent in a novel outline for their YA mystery series because...well, in younger days, we'd really enjoyed their YA mystery series. Not knowing any better, we addressed our query letter to the packager's VP.

A few weeks later, the phone rings. The company editor likes our outline. Wants to send us a book contract. And, oh, by the way, how is it that we know the company's vice-president?

We didn't know the VP, sadly, and we tell the editor that. (Writing Tip #2: Keep your secrets.) The editor is surprised, embarrassed, but sends us the contract, anyway. The book comes out, goes into additional printings, is sold overseas, makes the packager some decent money. We'd signed a flat-rate contract (Writing Tip #3: Avoid work-for-hire contracts) and the publisher was happy.

We remain convinced, to this day, that we'd never have received that phone call if the editor hadn't thought we were connected. So our best and most important tip? Know somebody.

Well, one of us got sick. Unfortunately...
(Nov. 20, 2009)...it was the one of us that tends to update this Blog-O-Rama. Since we're both reluctant to cruise over to the MD's office, we've been waiting (and waiting and waiting) for Nature to take her course and fix things. Busy with other things, She refused to help out.

So, today, we buckled and saw the physician. The doctor did his magic, prescribed his antibiotics, and promised that health will descend upon the afflicted in a week or so. He made an absolute promise.

Unless the antibiotic doesn't work. Then we're to return to the office....

Note to Luke Forney: Luke, man, what are you doing? When you should be studying, you're reading Giffen (love Giffen), Campbell and Kurt Vonnegut. Sweet Lord in Heaven, Vonnegut. Then, over break, you're going to read our manuscript -- and compare our pages to those guys? Oh, no, you don't.

Listen up. The next book you review? Make it the heartwarming "Coming Out" by Danielle Steel. You know "Coming Out" must be good because DS has sold over 500 million books. DS must know how to write because she's written, like, seventy friggin' books so far and somebody keeps publishing the things. And one reviewer of the novel, wrote -- in caps, "I REALLY ENJOYED THIS BOOK. IT GOT TO THE POINT FROM THE VERY BEGINING. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE WHO LIKES TO READ BOOKS THAT GETS TO THE POINT."

Read "Coming Out", Luke. Then read our manuscript.

Bored now. Time to do something else...
(Nov. 14, 2009)...because, really, the worst part of writing is waiting for other people to respond to that writing. Wicked Games is still floating about. We have a contract for whis•pers but the editing process hasn't begun. Luke will be reading Aly's Luck and reporting back but that's not until later this month.

Neither one of us feels like working on Dust today and we don't have any other future projects in mind. Instead, maybe we'll do a book review or two (and, if you like book reviews, you might travel over to Random Things).

"I weep for the souls of the trees that died to make this book..."
(Nov. 6, 2009)...is not the kind of comment that you'll find at Luke Review s. (SFX magazine printed the "weep" review. We don't know which book they were weeping over. We'd make some snarky remark of our own but, who knows?, we may need SFX magazine on our side some day.) Luke Forney isn't that kind of book reviewer. He's got class...and, oddly enough, he's in class as I type this. We were lucky to find him.

With Luke's permission, please know that he's our Anonymous Reader. Renée is happy because Luke is a Robert E. Howard fan (and, if you go to Luke's site, you'll find a great review of Howard's "Beyond the Black River") and Harrell is happy because Luke is a Stephen King fan (and Luke reviews King's work, too. Check the Luke Reviews archives).

Luke will be giving Aly's Luck a looksie by the end of November. Good or bad, we'll share his overall opinion with you. Unless it starts out with, "I weep for the souls of the trees that died to make this book".

Trying to find someone to read an unpublished manuscript...
(Nov. 2, 2009)...is usually a chore. Few people are willing to look at a book in its beta stage. The absolutely-right reader has to be well-read in the genre, has to be willing to give criticism when its merited or praise where it's been earned, and -- most importantly -- needs to be someone whose opinion is respected by others. By "others", we mean "us".

For Aly's Luck, we've found exactly that reader. We are delighted that Anonymous Reader has agreed to read our pages.

If he agrees, we'll share his name in a later post. If he allows, we'll share some of his thoughts, too.

We called our travel guide, "Fencken's Guide to Intergalactic Travel"...
(Oct. 28, 2009)...because we thought the name "Fencken" was such a silly, fun, nonsensical kind of last name -- and our current writing project, Aly's Luck, is a silly, fun, nonsensical s-f novel. Should Aly's Luck ever make it to publication, you'll find an excerpt from Fencken's Guide near the beginning of the book. And, yep, it's silly and fun.

Today, we finally got around to Googling the name and discovered that there are many, many different Fenckens in the world. Who'd a thunk it? (Google also says that there are 194,000 references to "who'd a thunk it". Who'd a thunk that?)

We discussed using a different name before deciding, what the hell: If there are that many Fenckens out there, then one of them might well have written the travel guide that's referenced in our novel. So we kept the name. After all, it fits.

In related news, we've just finished the third draft of Aly's Luck. This makes us happy.

After publishing the website, we eagerly notified our editor...
(Oct. 22, 2009)...who writes back today to say, "Yay!". And then asked us for the website address.

Hmmm. Since the big search engines don't bother listing a site for weeks, this is probably something we should have mentioned originally. Guess that's why she gets the big editor money.

Homer Simpson: "Now it's time to play the waiting game..."
(Oct. 15, 2009)...but, then, Homer goes on to say: "Oh, the waiting game sucks. Let's play Hungry Hungry Hippos!"

We're with Homer. How we wish we owned a Hungry Hungry Hippos game.

Since we don't, we've decided to play with Kiva, instead. (You might want to play it, too. You've find it at kiva.org).

Days later, the publishers received the contracts...
(Oct. 7, 2009)...not that many days later, really. Generally, we're too...um, thrifty...to want to send the pages via Priority Mail but the postal person told us that was our only option if we wanted a Delivery Confirmation Receipt. We did want a Delivery Confirmation Receipt. The USPS delivered the contracts to the publisher today.

And now we play the waiting game.

So we signed the thing...
(Oct. 5, 2009)...and the contract went out in the mail. We're (probably) about to become published authors -- after Rochelle contacts us again, we do some editing and a cover is selected and...whatever else is needed. We'll let you know.

When the whis•pers contract arrived...
(Oct. 2, 2009) ...it came as an electronic attachment. Multiple pages but straightforward terminology and, after a careful reading, not too hard to decipher. We keep the paperback rights, the publisher keeps the electronic rights, and we get to see our baby take a leap into the electronic void. We'll take a couple of days to think things over but, honestly, I think this is going to work out for us.

While we waited for our book contract...
(Oct. 1, 2009) ...another publisher contacted us. They liked the first three chapters of our woolly werewolf romance, Wicked Games, and they've asked to see the rest of the piece. This is our romance novella, the story that Renée insists on calling, "Werewolf porn." You should know that this particular tale isn't porn but is, rather, a sensual romance that happens to involve a werewolf.

Actually, two werewolves. Two sexy werewolves. But our heroine, she's NOT a werewolf. She just decides, um...that werewolf lovin' could be a fun thing. The story also involves true love, a murder mystery, Romeo & Juliet, and one of the world's richest men.

And it's only 15,000 words.

72 Hours later....
(Sept. 28, 2009) ...we still haven't heard from the "You'll Hear From Us in 48 Hours!" web design service. Desperately, we decide that we maybe oughta design our very own website. We also decide to find a website name that positively screams, "The Wit and Wisdom of Renée Harrell!"

Strangely enough, TheWitAndWisdomofReneeHarrell.com name is available for purchase. (We really did check. Think of how bizarre it would have been if someone had actually registered that dot-com.)

We decide not to use that. Tossing names back and forth, we remembered our old bowling league of years ago: Mars Needs Bowlers and decide to use Mars Needs Writers as our site address. A couple of hours later, we also find an easy web design thingie on Weebly.com and start pulling the pieces together.

The thing you're looking at now is the result.

Looking (again) at the publisher's website...
(Sept. 25, 2009) ...we learn that there's no way around it. When and if the contract arrives, we'll need a "web presence" to pimp our novel. A blog site would be good. Maybe we should post on Facebook every now and then, too. A website? That's best of all.

We're happy to oblige but what do we know about technology? One of us has an eye in her mouth, the other one is a pretend cowboy. So we contact two web design services. One of 'em auto-promised an answer in the next 48 hours. The other one wanted $600 for a basic layout (we're guessing, something like this but better). Who knows if we'll even make $600 from the book? Hmmm....

So then our editor said...
(Sept. 14, 2009)...there had been a mix-up with our contract. The publisher had sent the wrong contract to the editor (really? What was wrong about it?) just before said publisher jetted off on book-related business.

The new contract is coming. Soon.

About that website...
(Sept. 1, 2009)...can you believe that someone has registered the name, ReneeHarrell.com? They're not using it yet, it's parked with GoDaddy.com, but they've actually paid a fee to retain its use.

This stuns the both of us. There's another Renée Harrell? Unbelievable. More unbelievable? There's even a ReneeHerrell.com.

We have to think of another website name. ReneeAndHarrell.com? Please, God, no.

"It is my pleasure to offer you a contract...
(August 25, 2009)...for whis•pers. I loved this book and feel it would be a wonderful addition to our line. From the spooky premise to the crisp writing, I truly enjoyed your story." So writes Rochelle, an Acquisitions Editor, from a tiny publishing house.

Contract to follow. Happy happy, joy joy right now.

Only one concern: The publisher expects their authors to have a website.

And here we are.