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We all love to turn to inspirational advice when we feel like we just cannot go on down our chosen path.  One of the most common such pieces of advice is that quitters never win, and winners never quit.  It sounds real great!  It pumps you up!  It gives you the motivation to plow ahead!

The truth is that inspirational phrases like this are half truths.  Yes, quitters  never win because they give up before they do so.  And yes, winners never have quit because they have won.  But there is an important caveat to this old saying that is missing.  That caveat is that by not quitting doesn’t mean you will win. Read more…

Ok, so I have been thinking about my “plan” for moving forward as I seek to get my work published.  My wife and I are currently on Chapter 13 of the live read edit for Under the Darkened Moon, and I have given myself a deadline of the end of September to have it, and the edits that come from it, done.  Boom, put it to bed.  It will be, by that point, as polished as it is going to get without the cost of professional editing.*

I am going to start the process of querying literary agents at that point.  I will be doing batches of 10 at a time and give each batch two or three weeks to reply before I send out the next round.  Some agents, I realize, don’t work that fast, but I figure it will give some nice overlap moving forward.  Oh, and BTW, if you are a literary agent and would like to see my work before I start querying, then by all means drop me a line to get at the top of the list!  I love it when people show initiative!  It’s a trait that I highly admire in people! Read more…

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am really frustrated by the category Young Adult, aka YA, in fiction. I swear, if you ask ten different people to define “young adult” you get ten different answers.

The basis is usually the same and the actual definition is that the story must appeal to a teenage audience and be marketed towards them. But then things diverge quickly from there. Some people claim that the main characters themselves must been teenagers (i.e. Young Adults). Some people claim that the characters don’t need to teenagers, but that they must deal with the problems teens face. Some claim that it is ONLY a distinction in how the book is marketed, i.e. to Young Adults as previously stated. Some people even claim that a story being written in cinema style third person omniscient POV makes a story YA.

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