Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Finished Again

A new quarter starts next week, so I am scrambling to put the finishing touches on my novel.
Yesterday, again sitting on the front porch, I added a few scenes recommended by Earl to increase the suspense at the end, upping the level of difficulty for the characters. Think of the movie Fatal Attraction and how you believe the character is dead in the bathtub but she comes back one more time.
Well, really, my novel isn't like that at all, but we didn't want to make it too easy for my characters to achieve their goals.
Now I'm working on the query letter that I will send to agents. If the agents like the idea and my writing, they will ask for some of, or all of, the novel.
Then I send the novel and wait.
Some agents are very quick at getting back to me, others may take months. In the past, I've gotten a lot of requests for my novels from agents. Does that mean the ideas are good? The query letters are good? The novels aren't good?
I don't have the answers but I keep working at it, trying to improve each time.
If an agent likes my letter and then my novel, I'll be offered representation.
That hasn't happened yet, so I don't know how they do it, but I'll look at every phone number that comes to my cell phone and pray it's from New York City, which is where most of the agents are located.
Before I get ahead of myself, I need a blurb that describes my book in a paragraph to include in the letter. The blurb needs to give away the plot. I can't save any of it for suspense, but I don't want to give it all away to my blog readers, so here's the paragraph with the word "secret" inserted in place of the real treasure:
After Fia, an American woman, loses her job, a phone call draws her to France with her husband and teenage twins to run her uncle’s bed and breakfast in Provence, but she soon learns that her uncle is hiding a 60-year-old secret from World War II. I've removed the rest of the blurb for work. Thanks for all of your help guys.

I'll probably rewrite this paragraph a dozen times trying to get it right, so if you have any suggestions, I'd appreciate it. You could help me rewrite it only 11 times.
And we came up with a new title. I was calling the book "The Summer of France" because it started as a book about a couple who goes to France to run a bed and breakfast, but it became so much more. The title didn't really fit any more. The new title: Rescuing Raphael, An Adventure in Provence.
An adventure in Provence kind of sounds like an amusement park or something, so I might need to refine that as well.
Then I describe the novel as a kind of Dan Brown meets A Year in Provence. I wanted to describe it as Dan Brown meets Bridget Jones, but Earl pointed out that Bridget Jones was single, not married with teenage twins.
What do you think about the paragraph and the title? I'd love your feedback so I can keep editing and improving.

5 comments:

Sheila said...

I don't like "withstand" here: "They are chased by thugs and must withstand their own temptations..."
it doesn't sound right to me.

That was the only thing that stood out to me. The rest sounds great can't wait to read it.

Just Saying said...

Love "Rescuing Raphael".

Not reading the paragraph.

Wouldn't know the first thing about improving it anyway.

Linda said...

Good luck! I read it twice and it's hard to judge without having read the book. I hope you get a ton of phone calls because one day I'd like to be able to read it!

Just Plain Tired said...

Best of luck with the agents!

Linda said...

I've tried to get an agent several times. I think it's like trying to become a movie star so good luck. The book sounds great!

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