Until now, that is.  I’ve decided to finally compile my entire sordid story here, in one central place, to save myself having to relate it multiple times.  (Plus, this way I can make all my embellishments official!  Haha!)

I’d be lying if I said I’d always dreamed of being a writer.  Certainly I’ve always enjoyed writing, but as a kid I had any number of career goals (astronaut, president, film composer, NBA all-star, the list goes on…).

This isn’t to say I didn’t write a lot, because I did.  The problem was this: early on in an American male’s life, he learns that skills associated with reading and writing aren’t exactly…”cool.”  In 5th grade I won the school spelling bee and almost started crying – half from embarrassment, half from excitement.  In 6th grade I let my mom talk me into entering a poem in the “Reflections” contest, and the poem went on to win the school competition, district competition, and regional competition.  (I still have the trophy in my office.)  But poem-writing is not exactly among the coolest things a 6th-grade boy can do, and when I was told I had to read my award-winning poem in front of the school I wanted to die…especially because the poem took almost ten minutes to read (it was an epic poem, of course).

Based on input from my wonderful 6th-grade peers – most of whom are probably in jail now – I made the mistaken assumption that writing poetry was not among the list of skills that I should lay claim to.  Loogie-hocking, foreign curse word repertoire, and humorous names for human anatomy were much more in vogue at the time, so I didn’t pursue creative writing much throughout junior high and my freshman year of high school.

By 10th grade I had matured (slightly) and I think I finally realized that popular opinion among my peers was useless when it came to assessing career skills.  Not coincidentally, I also started work on my first video game project – what would be the first of several.

It was in 10th grade that I was first introduced to the RPG genre of video games and Final Fantasy 7 in particular.  If you’ve never played a Final Fantasy game, I pity you.  The name is a bit silly, but the game itself is a brilliant accomplishment on every level.  FF7 tells an intricate story of life and death through the age-old mechanism of epic conflict between good and evil, but it does so in an interactive medium that is hard to describe.  The artwork is beautiful, the music transcendent, and even the gameplay is a phenomenal balance between simplicity and strategy.  The game – though 12 years old – continues to inspire fan art, spin-off games, even full-length films, and while none of these comes close to the original, all are welcome tributes to what may be the most influential RPG in history.

FF7 was inspirational to my 10th grade mind on a multitude of levels.  I am still amazed at the way that video games (well-made ones, mind you) are capable of blending the visual and aural arts with interactive storytelling.  Games are a peerless medium, one too often used to less than its full potential.

But that is another topic for another day.

As a fairly accomplished musician and a closet writer, I remember the epiphany that accompanied my first play-through of Final Fantasy 7: here was a medium where I could combine a love of good music with a desire to tell complex and engaging stories, all through a medium made possible by my growing interest in computer programming.  It was then that I resolved to someday create a video game that would do for others what FF7 did for me: awe, inspire, and entertain.

Unfortunately, creating a complex story-driven video game is not well-suited to being done in the spare time of a high school student.  To combat this, I tried assembling online teams to help me on my path to world video game domination, but surprisingly people weren’t very reliable while working for free.

Imagine that.  :)

Years passed, and video game project after video game project slipped out of my grasp.  I tried every combination of local teams, international teams, professionals, amateurs, hobbyists, men, women, adults, teens – and never could I assemble the right mix of people to make my dream video game.

The problems with these various approaches are obvious now, in retrospect.  I suppose I was a bit of a narcissist in my leadership endeavours.  I thought that my perception of the ideal game story, score, artwork and design was clearly best, and that undoubtedly hampered my ability to work in a team environment.  I also had a bad knack for getting people really excited about these projects, recruiting tons of participants, only to realize I had no idea how to run a project of that size and scope.

I also realize now why there are so few well-made video games.  Coordinating the logistics of production with a vision of what makes a great game is an unimaginably difficult task, and those who do it are truly remarkable individuals/teams/companies.

Anyway, during my years of attempted video game production I amassed a number of meaningful souvenirs.  One of my favorites is the free collection of original music now available on this site.  There aren’t many places online where you can find 2+ hours of quality original music available for download – especially places that allow you to download, copy, and distribute that music without legal entanglements.

Another souvenir is the thousands of lines of free programming resources also available on this site.  It’s no coincidence that most of my programming tutorials and examples are game-related – after all, most of these examples stem from video game projects of varying scope and size.  I have (literally) hundreds more examples and tidbits lying around, and I hope to someday get the bulk of these posted to this site.

Finally, perhaps the best souvenirs from the entire era are a collection of original stories that have never seen the world outside my hard drive.  Some of these stories are complete and almost ready for publication; others are mere frameworks around which a compelling novel could be wove.  I spent a weekend several years ago reading through my archives of original literature, and wow – I really think there is some great stuff there.  (Of course, this could just be my nostalgia speaking… :)

By no coincidence, this epiphany happened during my senior year of college.  I was less than a year from completing my degree in bioinformatics, and I was starting to have nagging doubts that a career in bioinformatics was right for me.  Deep down, I still dreamed of a career in media, something that I had decided against years before because of the logistics of making a decent living with a liberal arts degree.  (No offense intended to all you liberal arts majors out there – I’m sure there are tons of jobs for people with degrees in medieval literature analysis!)

And then it hit me – one doesn’t have to be an English major to be a successful writer.  Some of my favorite writers (Michael Crichton, Terry Brooks, William Forstchen) are guys with normal careers who turned their expertise and interests into brilliant and compelling storytelling. Michael Crichton in particular is a great example of this.

So I made the decision to finish my degree in bioinformatics, but under an important condition – that I would have my first novel written before I graduated.

I didn’t quite make that goal, but I was able to finish a complete draft by the end of September 2007 (I had graduated in April).  I immediately embarked on sending out my masterpiece to agents and publishers everywhere, hoping that one of them would sign me up and I could forgo having to commit to a so-called “real” job.

Thus began my first eye-opening experience (of several) related to professional writing.  Almost no agents responded to my queries, and those that did used form letters that meant nothing to me.

After several weeks of going about this, I finally received a reply from a small publishing house in the northeast.  To summarize it, the email read something like this:

Dear Tanner Helland,

Thanks for sending us the 20 pages of your manuscript.

I liked the prologue very much–the tone and the content–I wanted to read more and hoped the rest of the book would live up to it.  Unfortunately, it didn’t for me. . . I felt the setting was unrealistic, and it seems to me that fantasy only works in a setting where most of the details are realistic.

Please realize that any editorial judgement is idiosyncratic and that another editor might leap at your manuscript. Of course we wish you the best of luck in placing the book elsewhere and appreciate your letting us see it.

Sincerely…

To this day, I am extremely grateful for this simple email.  The advice was spot-on, and exactly what I needed to motivate a strong rewrite of the text.  Unfortunately, I had already submitted my manuscript to the first ever Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition, but that didn’t prevent me starting work on a much-needed revamp of what had been a hasty and somewhat ill-conceived first shot at a formal novel.

While I feverishly wrote and rewrote my novel (“v2.0″ as I thought of it), the original manuscript progressed nicely through the ABNA contest.  It made the first cut (5,000 people) and then progressed through to the second round (~800 people).  As part of the semifinalist reward, I received a manuscript review from Publishers Weekly.  It read as follows (this is verbatim):

In this promising debut, clearly the first in an intended series, fifteen-year-old Teal and his family move to the city in hopes that doctors there can save his gravely ill father. Seeking refuge in the janitor’s closet from a bully, Teal and his friend Eddie discover a portal that leads to an underground labyrinth built by an alien race called the Zargansk. Soon, they are on the run from men in black suits determined to kill them. Sixteen-year-old Kyralee saves them, but her presence raises more questions than answers. Teal’s feelings for Kyralee weave through this action-packed narrative, reminding us that while he is humanity’s best hope against the Zargansk, he is still a typical ninth-grader. Though the novel doesn’t break any new ground in the genre, the fast pace and cool gadgetry is enough to keep the reader engaged and rooting for Teal and his friends to the very end. — manuscript review by Publishers Weekly, an independent organization

As part of the process, I was also entitled to received a short (and somewhat useless) review from an Amazon Top Reviewer:

Very well written, but just not my cup of tea, as I don’t care for science fiction stories. But the author has a good imagination and excellent writing style and I liked his use of dialogue – it was appropriate for the characters.

In addition to those two pieces of “formal” critique, I participated in “story swaps” with over 30 other writers – where I’d swap them a chapter of my book for a chapter of their book, and we’d trade comments.  That was an immensely useful process, and by the end of it I had a MUCH better idea of what my fledgling manuscript needed.

My manuscript didn’t progress beyond the semifinalist round of the ABNA contest (genre fiction in general faired very poorly – apparently the judges were interested primarily in literary fiction), but that was okay because I knew the story needed a serious overhaul in several regards.  One of my first orders of business was changing the POV from 3rd-person to 1st-person, a decision that I believe fits the tone and style of the story much better.  I also rewrote the entire first half of the book with a renewed focus on character and setting, striving hard to create the realistic world to which my first customized rejection letter alluded.

I also took into account the Publisher’s Weekly comment of “…the novel doesn’t break any new ground in the genre…” by working in some new ideas, things I had never seen before in middle-grade fiction.  I’m hoping these improved the overall novelty of the novel (sorry for the awkward wording).

This “v2.0″ rewrite took almost as long as it had taken to write the book the first time, but I believe both I and the story were much better for the experience.

Once I had the novel at a point where I couldn’t stand to read through it another time, I cashed in my final prize from the Amazon contest (a free self-publishing contract with Amazon’s new CreateSpace service) and got myself a real printed copy of Teal, my first novel.  (You can pick up a copy yourself from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Teal-Zargansk-Wars-Book-1/dp/1434886956)  I mostly did this so I could see my name on the cover of a book – and it has admittedly been fun to hand out copies to friends on family – but I have always intended for Teal to be published properly, and that is where my story sits today.

Before continuing, I should mention that in the months since self-publishing I have come to realize that revising is a horribly addicting process.  I know now that the back cover of my self-published book has a typo (d’oh!), and there are a number of minor issues with the novel itself that I’m itching to change.  But if I continued to fiddle with the story, it wouldn’t serve much purpose.  I need to let Teal rest for awhile while it treads through its second round of horrible, painful, ultra-humbling query letters.

As much as I gripe, this second round of query letters has been much better than the first.  After two months of waiting, I received a full manuscript request from the top agent on my list (an expert with YA fiction, including – gasp – YA science fiction and fantasy!) and I am now trying to be as patient as possible as I wait to hear what he/she thinks.  (I’m keeping anonymous so he/she has a chance to review the manuscript fairly!)

While I would give my right arm (and maybe my left one too) to work with this particular agent, I realize now that writing is not about being published.  Writing is about doing what you love – about telling a story that only you can tell.  This is what all great writers have done, and if they are “published” then that’s just the icing on the cake.

Great icing, to be sure – but icing nonetheless.

I have already started work on a new novel totally unrelated to Teal.  This one is much less science-fiction, much more modern thriller.  My experience in bioinformatics should prove especially useful for this book, and you can bet I’ll post more about it as progress continues.

And that’s where my writing efforts are as of now.  Did I miss anything?

Finally, while I’m thinking about it I want to leave a short bit of advice to any would-be writers out there – something that I wish others had shared with me.

Get your first book done as quickly as possible.  Write as fast as you can possibly write, and don’t worry about anything but storytelling.  Dump that first story out of your brain and onto your computer/notebook ASAP.

Once that’s done, review your manuscript while it’s hot and make sure you are okay attaching your name to it.  Assuming you are, throw together query letters for any agent that might accept your manuscript and send ‘em out like gangbusters.

It won’t take long before the rejection letters start pouring in.  In my case, about one agent in four actually responded with a form rejection.  None sent customized rejections until they had requested a manuscript.  The vast majority never responded at all.

Regardless of how this works for you, wait several weeks, and when it seems like the rejection letters have finally stopped, take a deep breath.

Then smile.

You’ve successfully survived your first round of rejection letters.  It’s painful – really painful – but at least there is a light at the end of your tunnel.  By now, you’ve had some time away from your novel.  You should have a good idea of what can be improved and what areas need the most help.  You’ve also survived the horrible pain of rejection letters – and best of all, you can shrug the majority of them off because you know you can do better.  Hopefully you’ve also gotten a good taste of what it takes to write a quality query letter, and you can keep that in the back of your mind as you work on revisions.

I think I made the mistake of placing too many hopes and dreams into the first version of my first novel.  I felt like I had gotten it to perfection, and that made the initial round of rejection letters more painful than they probably needed to be.  There’s something to be said for rushing a product out the door, then being able to blame the “rushed launch” for any problems that arise.

Is that horrible advice?  I hope not.  I wish I had known what query letters entailed before I started writing Teal.  I think that would have helped me a great deal.

I also could have used a greater sense of detachment from that first novel.  It would have allowed me to be a bit more severe in my trimming and rewriting, and then I think the entire revision process would have been much more seamless and streamlined.  As it stood, I was much too sensitive to properly revise the first draft, and it wasn’t until multiple readers pointed out the same problems that I finally relinquished and fixed some glaring flaws.  I hope I can spare you the trouble of having to experience the same.

At any rate, sorry for the enormity of this post, and I hope to have good news regarding Teal in the “near” future…

In my opinion, the whole querying system is antiquated and ill-matched for the modern era.  One great way to revamp the system would involve agents and publishers exercising a bit of tech savvy and placing custom query submission forms on their websites.  This has worked very well for recruitment and hiring, so why wouldn’t it work for connecting writers and agents?

(I have heard other great implementation ideas, but they will have to wait for a future article.)

Anyway, if I had room to spare in my query letter, I’d love to include a number of relevant things, including this list of items.

A Résumé or C.V.

As a working member of the corporate world, I find it shocking that more agents don’t require résumés from potential clients.  If I were an agent, I’d seriously consider reviewing a résumé before a query letter – because if a writer has a horrible résumé, you can bet their writing would match.

I, for one, think my case as a writer is much more compelling with my résumé attached.  I have a diverse set of work experience (including owning an online music studio for three years, teaching at a local arts academy for two years, and my current job as an information scientist for a major supplement company) and every one of those jobs has taught me skills that have positively influenced my writing.  Owning an online business taught me all about marketing – especially online marketing.  Teaching brought a whole new insight into what teenagers think about life, school, friends, and even fiction – all of which is applicable to a YA writer.  In my current job, I’ve edited hundreds of articles for scientific accuracy and consistency, as well as replying to over 6,000 customer inquires regarding my company’s products.  That’s a lot of writing.

I could go on, but the antiquated format of query letters forces me to be selective in the employment information I present.  Why?  Why not ask for a résumé or C.V.?  Agents talk often about the agent-client relationship being a business relationship, so why not treat it as such and require a résumé?  That could be an excellent way to pre-sort “applicants” and reduce the number of irrelevant query letters they have to read.

Why I Wrote THIS Novel

Admittedly, this information could find its way into a query letter (though not easily) but I have to believe that WHY someone has written a particular novel is almost as important as the novel that has been written.  Did you write this novel because you were bored?  Are you just trying to escape corporate life?  Is this novel your greatest accomplishment, or are you just a liberal arts major who can’t find a job?  (haha!)

Certainly an awe-inspiring motivation can’t make up for poor writing, but I’m surprised that agents and publishers don’t take this under consideration.  The fact that I am a successful member of the corporate world who is willing to give it all up to take a stab at writing – doesn’t that count for something?  Please?  :)

Plans for Future Work

Yeah yeah, it’s premature to discuss future work in a query letter.  But if the agent-client relationship is going to be a long-term arrangement, don’t you care about my long-term plans as a writer?  Wouldn’t you like to know that I’m also working on a non-fiction book, or that my audio experience totally lends itself to a podiobook adaptation of my novel?  Aren’t you interested that I’ve designed my book with video game adaptation in mind?

Again, this isn’t a deal-breaker – but it seems to me that the agent-client relationship should be approached from as long-term an angle as possible.

I believe that my long-term plans for my novel make it a very compelling choice for agents.  I’ve worked on multiple indie game development teams, and the link between video games and books is far too often overlooked.  A video game based off a book could create massive interest – maybe even more than a movie tie-in, and at a potentially lower development cost.

Another angle emerging authors should examine is podiobooks.  For those who don’t know, podiobooks are a new venue with enormous potential – basically, audiobooks in mp3 format.  Podiobooks.com is a great place to learn more.

It’s no coincidence that I ran an online music studio for several years and I’m a huge believer in the potential for podiobooks.  The idea of free mp3s of a book is very, very cool.  Add in an original musical score, sound effects, and other things shunned by the traditional “audiobook” crowd, and you can start to see why podiobooks get me excited.  Teens would devour podiobook versions of novels if produced and marketed correctly.

Education

Now I know this is going to anger people, but I’m going to say it anyway.

An MFA in creative writing says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about your ability to write a good book.

I feel that I can safely say this because I am a trained musician who taught at a legitimate music academy.  However, my bachelor’s degree is in bioinformatics – about as far removed from “music” as you can get.

So it was not my degree, but my composition experience and non-college music training that got me the job, and I greatly enjoyed my years in the music education field.  Sharing the gift of music was a treat.

But I learned something very interesting during my time as a teacher – that a degree in music in no way correlates to musicianship.  There were some college-trained teachers at the academy who could bring you to tears with their playing, and there were those – with piano performance degrees – who were significantly worse musicians than I.  (Than me?  I never know.)

And I was a science major.

Now I don’t mean to imply that a degree isn’t useful and that it can’t indicate a certain level of proficiency.  But in the creative arts, there are some things that cannot be taught.  Music is one of those things.  I had teenage students with an innate talent for music that could outperform almost any one of the academy teachers.  And, conversely, I had students who could get a PhD in music and still sound terrible.

Writing is the same way, which is why I am frustrated that some agents give more credence to individuals with MFAs.  This is a cop out, and a distinctly unfair one at that.  Yes, individuals with MFAs may have “formal” training in writing – but what does that have to do with their creative talent?  How many of the great writers in history have MFAs?  (I know that’s a logically flawed argument, but that doesn’t make it meaningless.)  How many of YOUR favorite writers had an MFA degree before they published a first novel?

MFAs serve a definite purpose, and they can certainly be the icing on the cake for an otherwise excellent writer.

But an MFA alone does not indicate any degree of writing proficiency, and my science degree does not disqualify me from being a good writer.

Opinions of My Friends and Family

I can appreciate why the opinions of friends and family are a major taboo in query letters.  And, unlike previous bullet points, I don’t think this will ever be something that agents care about.

But honestly, if only you knew MY friends and family!  :)

My wife is a brilliant woman.  In fact, she took the GRE last weekend just to see how she would score – and her score was higher than that of the average Yale graduate admittant.  (I love being married to a genius!)  But she’s not just brilliant – she’s also a voracious reader, and a very discerning one at that.

So when my wife finished the first in a popular series of YA/middle-grade novels (having to do with a certain P.J. and Greek mythology) and said “you know, your book is much better than this,” I was ecstatic.  That’s no small praise from a woman who knows her literature, and one that loves me enough to be honest with my writing.

Then there are my ever-reliable teenage test-readers, to whom I owe a great debt.  This group of friends and family helped me fix some glaring logical flaws in my early manuscript drafts, and without their help I would have written a much worse novel.

Add to this the friends that I made in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition – whose advice was both consistent and insightful – and man, I’ve had quite the committee to check and double-check my manuscript.

Do agents care about any of this?  No, and I can’t say that I blame them.  But it sure would be nice if I had some way to share this type of information in context…

Referrals and/or Letters of Recommendation

The more I think about it, the more I think that getting a novel published should work more like getting into college.  Imagine if there were a “good writer” test you could take – maybe something like the verbal sections of the GRE or SAT.  That couldn’t be too hard to put together.  We could call it the PAT – the Prospective Author Test.

If you wanted to try your hand at being a writer you would need to take that exam, then send your score, letters of recommendation, résumé, and a query letter to prospective agents.  Wouldn’t that be nice?

Because seriously – if agents had the time to read letters of recommendation and/or contact a few referrals, I bet they’d love the information this provided on prospective clients.

Call my boss.  She’ll tell you that I’m a good employee – I show up on time, think outside the box, and don’t take lunches longer than I have to.  Call my landlord.  I’m never late on rent and the neighbors don’t complain about me.  Call my mom.  She loves me and thinks I could be the best writer in the world.  :)

If only this were an option.

In Conclusion

If agents had all the time in the world, I think I could put together a killer 50-page query letter.  It would include all of these elements (and more) and by the end of it, they’d be crazy to NOT read my manuscript.

At least that’s what I envision.  Hehe.

In the meantime, I guess it’s back to sending out my equivalent cup of blendered literary mush.  <sigh>

Let me know if you have any bright ideas on what the PAT should include!

What I find surprising, however, is the total lack of articles on writing a quality query rejection.  And, based on the number of query rejections I’ve received, I think agents and publishers could use a bit of advice.

So here is my authoritative do/don’t list on writing query rejections.  Take note, aspiring writers – if you receive a query rejection that isn’t up to par, politely recommend this article to whomever has rejected you.

1) DO lace the letter with profanities.

The vast majority of query rejections are sickeningly polite.  A solid dose of profane language would do a lot to spice things up.  Include a handful of d/f/s/*** words and you’ll solve two problems at once – crappy writers will stop querying you, and nice guys like me will count ourselves lucky that you didn’t take us on as clients.

2) DON’T say things you don’t mean.

Closing a rejection letter with “good luck with your publishing endeavors” (or something similar) is just cruel.  That’s like an attractive friend rejecting a date invitation, then wishing you good luck with your romantic life.

If you really want me to have “good luck,” you’d offer to read my manuscript.

2.1) DON’T use the word “unfortunately.”

“Unfortunately, this project is not right for us…”

Unfortunately? Really? I don’t think you mean that. It’s even more ironic when this statement is used and then the letter closes with “Sincerely…”

2.2) DON’T use the word “regret.”

“I regret to say that I don’t feel that I’m the most appropriate agent for your work.”

Again – regret? Is that really the word you want to use? Regret is defined as: “to feel sorrow or remorse for (an act, fault, disappointment, etc.)”  If you really are sad and remorseful over rejecting me, let me send you my manuscript! Then you’ll feel better! I will too!

3) DO spell my name wrong.

Nothing softens the blow of rejection like seeing my name misspelled in a rejection letter.  If an agent didn’t read closely enough to get my name right, he/she obviously didn’t read closely enough to realize what a great client I’d be.  Phew!

4) DO threaten to sue if I ever send you another query letter.

If you don’t close the door firmly, I’m going to seriously consider resubmitting my query with a different book title and pseudonym – just to see if you’re consistent. Save me the trouble and threaten legal action if I ever contact you again.

5) DON’T include your contact information at the bottom of the email.

You’ve just told me you’re not interested in my work – so why the hell are you giving me your address, phone number, and email?  Is it some kind of subliminal message?  Do you want me to contact you again?  Argh!

6) DO write in all caps.

If you’re going to the trouble of sending me a rejection letter, at least give it some oomph. Nothing says “we’re not interested” like a letter written in all caps.

7) DON’T call my “project” interesting.

“Although your project sounds interesting, we unfortunately do not feel it is right for us.”

No one is fooled by your use of the word interesting.  Interesting is one of those ambiguous words – like special – that could mean “good” or “bad.”  And, if you meant interesting as in good interesting, you would have requested manuscript pages.  This is a rejection letter, so you can only mean bad interesting, as in, “don’t you look…interesting…today.”

8) DO use form rejection letters.

Generic rejection is COMPLETELY preferable to personalized rejection.  If you really want to go the extra mile, please leave the underlined sections of your form letter visible, like so:

“Dear Tanner:

Thank you for querying us regarding your novel Teal…”

9) DON’T recommend pursuing other agents.

“We encourage you to query other agencies…”

So let me get this straight – you obviously don’t consider me a talented writer, yet you recommend contacting other agents.  Is this part of some nefarious plot to ruin your competitor’s careers?  A ha!  I’m on to you!

The fact that you’ve just rejected me means that I have no choice but to pursue other agents.  Save yourself the trouble and stick to “thanks, but no thanks.”  I can infer the need to pursue other agents on my own.

10) DO accept any query letters starting with, “I would like to present Teal, my 100,000 word YA sci-fi novel, for your consideration…”

This one’s a given.  :)

***

Fellow aspiring authors – can you think of anything I’ve forgotten?  If so, let me know!  Let’s make this the definitive guide to proper rejection!

Hehe.  That title looks more desperate than I thought it would.

Actually, this is a somewhat serious request.  After almost a year-and-a-half of writing and rewriting, I have finally completed my first novel – and it’s available for sale!  The book, titled Teal, is available at

https://www.createspace.com/3341273

…for the very reasonable price of $9.95 (USD).  For those of you with Amazon accounts, you can also find the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Teal-Zargansk-Wars-Book-1/dp/1434886956/

I don’t plan on making much (if any) money from selling Teal this way.  In fact, I’m just about ready to start sending out the book – along with the requisite query letters and such – to publishers and agents with the hopes of an actual publishing company picking it up. (Update: read here for the latest news, including Teal being acquired by an agent!)

So why go to all the work to self-publish this edition?  Actually, Amazon was kind enough to make the entire self-publication process free due to my participation in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition, and I plan on using this edition as a way to get the attention of agents and publishers.  My hope is that an actual, published copy of the book will look significantly more serious than a plain paper manuscript.  And, even if agents and publishers don’t read it, they can give the book to their kid….and maybe the kid will like it!

It’s certainly worth a try.

In the event that I’m able to acquire any money from self-published sales (which will be tricky, since Amazon takes an overwhelming percentage of that $9.95 price), it will all go directly into the “postage to find a real publisher” pot, and once that’s filled into the “pay for tannerhelland.com server” pot.  So c’mon, spare $10 for a good read and support an up-and-coming writer!

And who knows – if I’m ever famous, a first edition copy of my first book could be worth a lot of money.  Take John Grisham, for example: after much rejection, he eventually managed to get a small publishing house to print 5,000 copies of his first novel (A Time to Kill) of which Grisham himself bought 2,500 copies.  He used the books as Christmas presents and tried selling some to friends and family, but he was ultimately unable to sign up a big publisher.  It wasn’t until an agent picked up Grisham’s 2nd novel – The Firm – and got it made into a movie that people even knew he existed.

The irony?  Those first edition copies, which Grisham couldn’t sell even at $10 a piece, are now worth as much as $5,000.

So consider it an investment and buy a couple copies.  Give them to families and friends.  It makes for a great, inexpensive birthday present for anyone into Harry Potter, Eragon, Artemis Fowl, Alex Ryder, Percy Jackson or similar YA Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

Honestly, I think the book’s pretty good.  I’d love any feedback, and thanks in advance for your purchase!  :)

(The John Grisham story appears courtesy of “How to Write & Sell Your First Novel” by Oscar Collier and Frances Spatz Leighton.  A link to this book – an excellent one – appears below.)

How to Write & Sell Your First Novel

(One of the awards for being a semifinalist is being able to receive a free proof copy of your novel from Amazon’s CreateSpace self-publishing service.)

For this complex formatting task, I used OpenOffice 2.4.  I know, I know – v3 came out this week, but I generally have a policy against downloading new software for the first 30 days after its release.  I like to make sure that any grievous bugs and security errors are given time to show themselves before I jump on a new version bandwagon.

All-in-all, OO’s Writer performed remarkably well.  Adjusting page margins, layout, complex font issues, kerning, and spacing was all a breeze, and OO’s repagination was surprisingly fast and accurate (for a book looking to end up somewhere between 300 and 400 pages).

However, I have one major complaint.  There is no easy way to suppress footers and headers for any page except the first.  In fact, the only legitimate way to do it is to use a complex array of page styles, and even then I had major issues.

This is compounded by the fact that I consider myself a grade-A problem solver when it comes to software use.  As a programmer, I have no problem spending hours debugging problems like this – but I simply could not generate a simple, useful solution to this problem after an entire evening of research.  I debated saving my novel as a .DOC and trying to remedy the problem in Microsoft Word – but lo and behold, they also can’t suppress headers and footers on select pages without major hacking.

How is this possible?!  Has no one ever noticed this problem?  In my mind, this problem is fairly trivial to fix – especially in OO.  On the page properties dialog, simply add an option to SUPPRESS A HEADER OR FOOTER FOR THIS PAGE ONLY.

How hard is that?  Not hard at all.

Anyway, I am now in the process of discovering a good way to submit my request to the OO development team.  With this change, I can honestly say that I could write an entire novel – happily – in OO.  No small feat for an open source competitor to the all-but-ubiquitous MS Word.

OpenOffice.org can be downloaded for free at http://www.openoffice.org/.  They have been a bit overwhelmed by download requests for version 3, so don’t be alarmed if you get a plain-text page instead of their full site!

Anyway, after returning and glancing through several particularly boring entries, I’ve decided that many aspiring authors could stand to listen to a bit of music while they work.

So as a courtesy, here’s some recommended listening for your genre of choice:

Science Fiction Music

Good Apollo, I’m Burning Star IV, Volume One: From Fear Through The Eyes of Madness

by Coheed and Cambria

While every Coheed and Cambria album is worthy of your listening, I found IV a particularly good album for writers. For those who don’t know, Claudio Sanchez (the band’s lead singer) is also a comic book author. C&C’s music tells the story of Claudio’s comic book series The Amory Wars, an epic space opera. Each album covers a wide array of styles; some songs are almost pop, others punk, some are really pretty acoustic numbers, and C&C’s classic metal sound is hard to beat. Even cooler is the band’s near-use of leitmotifs, as recurring themes throughout each album appear depending on the events and speakers.

Every C&C album is brilliant. Do check them out.

Fantasy Music

Final Fantasy S Generation

Anything Nobuo Uematsu, but I especially like Final Fantasy: S Generation

If you’ve lived this long and never heard of Final Fantasy, you’re lame. No really – you’re totally missing out on some of the most original music to come out of Japan in the last twenty years. Uematsu (the series’ long-time composer) was named as one of Time Magazine’s “Innovators,” and the recognition was well-warranted. Uematsu’s scores draw from a wide variety of styles and he’s done more to make video game music legitimate than perhaps anyone else in his field.

S Generation is a fantastic orchestral remix of songs from Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 – the games for the original PlayStation. I’m particularly fond of the beautiful orchestral arrangement of Aeris’ Theme, and the piano remix of Eyes on Me is second-to-none.

The otherworldly nature of fantasy writing could draw a lot of inspiration from the mystic beauty of Uematsu’s work.

Action/Adventure Music

Phobia

by Breaking Benjamin

This is perhaps the most epic rock album you’ll ever own. If you enjoy bands like Foo Fighters, Fuel, Evanescence, and 3 Doors Down, this album is especially likely to impress you.

Phobia is one of those rare albums where you can actually listen to the entire album start-to-finish without skipping a single track. Even stranger, the headline tracks from this album (Diary of Jane and Breath) aren’t even the best songs BB has to offer – Dance with the Devil and Evil Angel are both masterpieces, and the acoustic version of Diary of Jane almost eclipses the original.

This is perhaps my favorite hard rock album of all-time, and I wrote every action scene in The Zargansk Wars while listening to this killer CD.

More genres to follow in the future.