After the Fall

Author: gerry (Page 2 of 3)

Where the Crawdads Sing

I finished Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens and it is excellent. It’s a lesson in writing for anyone who wants to break rules about flittering about in time and bouncing between multiple points of views, but way more importantly it’s a great book.

It follows Kya, who’s family leave her one by one, until she is growing up alone in the marsh near Barkley Cove, NC. She has to hide from the social workers, try to fish and sell her catch all the while pretending she’s not a kid living alone in a shack. The local kids make fun of her, from her one day at school and they taunt the ‘Marsh Girl’, daring each other to run up and knock on her door. She’s very alone, and the novel follows her meeting others as she grows. When she falls in love, when she gets her heart broken.

On the time flittering, the story bounces from 1952 when Kya is six, and following her growing up, to 1969 when the local quarterback is found dead and the murder investigation that follows.

Pick up this book, you won’t regret it.

Lost Helix

Congratulations to my friend and critique partner Scott Coon on getting his debut novel published. Lost Helix is a well written, very entertaining space opera. It follows  DJ who dreams of writing music but is stuck on an asteroid mining facility. When his dad goes missing, DJ finds a file containing evidence of a secret war of industrial sabotage, a file encrypted by his dad using DJ’s song Lost Helix. Caught in a crossfire of lies, DJ must find his father and the mother he never knew.

You can check out the book here – Lost Helix.

You can check Scott’s other SciFi here – Scott Coon SciFi.

 

Submission tracking

So I’ve been submitting and so far it looks like.

Submitted to 10 agents and 1 publisher. I got 3 responses, all rejections. Average time to rejection? 5.67 days.

8 no replies.

Submitted 7 tweets to 2 Twitter pitch contest, 1 like, rejected in 3 days.

It’s not easy out there. I submitted to another agent this morning….

 

Nano is over

Nano is over, I finished the first draft of book 3 of my trilogy at 53,000 words. It will need a whole lot of work. Like tons of work. Like burning and starting from scratch. But still, it’s done, it’s got a layout and some ideas and some form of a plot, so there’s that.

Now that Nano is over there’s still writing to be done. The Writers of Sherman Oaks meets twice a week throughout the year. On Thursdays we have a critique group at Panera in Studio City and on Saturday mornings we meet at Panera in Encino to write. You can see the calendar on MeetUp here.

Nanowrimo and writing around Sherman Oaks.

In Los Angeles and doing nano? Come join us tonight at Panera in Encino from 6:30 to 9:00. I’ll be hosting, there’ll be word wars, chocolate and coffee. The Writers of Sherman Oaks have five write-ins every week of November to push you past the 50k mark.

Here is our calendar of nano events in and around the SF Valley.

We also have weekly write-ins on Saturdays and a critique group on Thursdays the rest of the year. Thursdays at 6:30 in Panera in Studio City and Saturdays 9:30 – noon at Panera in Encino.

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