BlogFest Week4: First 200 words

OK :) In the final week of the 'Gearing Up To Get An Agent Blogfest,' I'm going to post the first 200 words of 'MANAS.' It's a completely bad-ass YA spy/sci-fi adventure, and I'm fiercely proud of it. It's all packaged and ready to sell, I just need an agent willing to take a chance.

Name: Amber Plante

Title: MANAS

Genre: YA sci-fi adventure

Length: 77,000


Here's the pitch:

'Zellie, a prodigy spy with pink hair and a penchant for knitting, is sent to London to acquire Oliver, a smooth hacker with geeky good looks and access to genetics firm Pyxis. Zellie’s link to the ‘Project Manas’ data, hidden within the Pyxis mainframe, sends the pair on a speeding adventure through the bowels of London’s punk underground to romantic Paris streets and murky Venice canals. Can Zellie uncover the missing pieces of ‘Project Manas’ before a rogue agent with murderous intentions catches up?'

Here are the first 200 words. (247, actually -- I didn't want to break up a graph.) (I'm really nervous about this, btw.)

“Any time you’re ready,” I whispered into my headset. “I’m a go on your signal. Of course, I’m comfortable where I am, too, if you’d like to continue taking your sweet-ass time.”

Fifty stories below me, Trey grunted. “Keep your pants on, little one. You’ll get your shot. This isn’t as easy as it looks.”

Through our camtacts – nanobot technology built into contacts – I watched Trey lunge again at the metal backdoor in the subway station. My viewer, attached to my wrist, showed four quadrants with different locations. Each contained a direct link to the rest of my team – Trey, Jace, Marienne and Emerson. Altogether, a deadly quintet.

The reception on Trey’s quadrant fuzzed as he made contact with the rusted metal. “Have you even broken a sweat?” he asked, most of his attention focused on busting down the back door into the building to use as our escape route.

“I am a sniper, not a strong-armed brute,” I said sweetly. I was teasing him, but part of me wanted action, which I wouldn’t get unless something went wrong. Such is the role of the mission lead – boring.

“Never send a woman to do a man’s job.”

“Will you two shut up? You’re interfering with my feed,” Marienne snapped. Our resident hacker, she sat in the café across the street. Through the camtacts, I watched her orange fingernails click across the laptop’s keyboard. “OK, I’m waiting at the gates of the system mainframe. Your word and I’ll get the door.”

Thoughts, critiques, wildly enthusiastic compliments? :) Thank you in advance for every single one (even the mean ones). See you all on the other side of this contest! Good luck, and keep on writing ...

Open Letter to Agents

If you readers don't mind, I'd like to take just this single post to address literary agents -- not because I hate them and would like to crush gingerbread men bearing their likenesses into a pulp of sandy crumbs and gumdrops, but because I have something important to say that I think gets overlooked.

Dear Agent,

I know you are overworked; I know you get thousands of query letters a month; and I know you reject 99.9% of them. I know you make your money off selling a writer's work, and I respect, understand and support your pickiness 100%. However, with much respect, I think you misunderstand us a little.

We are the authors who have the spine to write to you in the first place -- and in doing so, we *expect* rejection. It's inherent and inevitable, and yet you insist on sugar-coating your rejection letters as if pleasantries soften the blow.

We take our stories that we've worked on for months and we willingly package them to be flayed and torn apart. It's crazy -- insane! -- for us to be so excited, joyous and nervous about having our heart broken and our 'baby' tossed aside into a sea of rejects, but we're lying to you and ourselves if we can't admit to encouraging the rejection all the same.

However, that said, we do not care for niceties -- just give it to us straight. We do not need hollow rejection letters with encouraging sentiments telling us to 'assume' you're wrong. And, most of all, we do not want to read page-long generic form letters addressed to 'Author' explaining what you look for in a book with veiled references to how ours did not fit the bill.

That's just mean, and it's not in the least bit helpful, especially when, deep down, we already know you're not right. Don't assume we need your encouragement -- the encouragement of a person who did not see the value in our art. All it engenders is irritability, hurt and an underlying gratitude that you *didn't* find our story interesting enough to pick up, because I can't image anyone would want someone who doesn't love their story to represent it to a publisher.

But, this doesn't mean us writers don't like getting letters from you. On the contrary, it's what keeps us checking our inboxes every 15 minutes of every single day until we get a response.

What do I propose, then? A form letter is fine -- but skip the shallow well-wishes. If you're not going to be specific as to why *my* story isn't piquing your interest, then I would like nothing more or less than a 'Thank you, but your story is not right for me at this time. Good luck.'

So, dear Agent, I appreciate your effort to be helpful and informative in a generic sense, but when it borders on cruel, just skip it altogether, please.

Thank you, and good luck in your search for willing authors to represent.

Hi, my name is... and other introductory info

I'm learning a hard lesson right now -- but one that is not wholly unexpected: Writing isn't the hard part when it comes to getting a manuscript published.

Quite the contrary.

You see, I spent about six months writing my debut work, a awesome fictional novel whose premise I'm not about to divulge online (because it'll get published one day...).

I delighted in the 'brain bursts' that led to multiple pages and witty dialogue, and I wallowed in the problems I simply couldn't solve. I planned my twists and discovered my main villain at about the same time I'd expect a very sharp reader to. To me, my characters became real -- their story more a personal memory of mine that made-up wanderings.

It was intensely fun and self-revealing -- and much easier than I expected it would be, considering all the work that went in to it in retrospect.

You see, I'm not only a novelist -- I'm also a mom of two very young boys, a wife of an exceptional man (and drill-sargent critic) and a full-time employee for leading out-of-home media company Captivate Network. I cook dinner every night, work out three times a week, and participate in leisure activities that include but are not limited to Facebook posts, weekends and nights playing Dungeons and Dragons with my husband and friends, weekly Rock Band 2 parties and, of course, my monthly facials and Friday night knitting group.

It's a lot to take on, but, as Tim Gunn would say, I make it work. I am a trained and naturally gifted writer -- come on, we all have something we're good at, and it's OK to be confident in your attributes. Some would say I border on cocky, but that's debatable.

But... the 'getting published' part. Well, that just has me a little apathetic at the moment, to be honest.

My novel, while very well written and based on a strong story, has garnered more interest than I logically had the right to expect and/or deserve. I am, literarily speaking, a nobody from nowhere who one day decided she was going to write a book.

But, that's not where the story goes bad -- I've actually had quite a bit of intense interest in my novel. It's just that, in the given market, no one is willing to commit to something they aren't wholeheartedly passionate about. Unlike like 99% of writers whose first books go unnoticed by agents and have to resubmit numerous drafts, I've been contacted by *four* separate agencies about possible representation. That's truly amazing and an incredible compliment.

It's just that three out of the four have now declined. After requesting the whole document, I was really thinking the last agent was going to be the one -- because, after all, it only takes one.

That may become my new mantra: It only takes one -- one agent to like it, one agent to sell it and one publisher to buy it.

It's time to keep writing my second novel and, while awaiting word from the last pending agency, keep moving forward.