I wrote my first MS RINGS OF TIME (Mandorian Prophecies – YA Fantasy) in third person. Since it was my first book and it took me upwards of five years to write, it was awesome and didn’t need much to be perfect.

*cue the bozo the clown music*

Ahem… Then I wrote RUNAWAY CHOICES. Which literally ran away with my brain and didn’t return until the WIP was over. And strangely enough… I wrote it in first person.

Hmmm… Now I have thought about it long and hard and wondered why I wrote it in first person. I think because I wanted to capture all Beck’s inner turmoil without the fudgement of a narrator (You like that word… I just made it up…). She was a very complex character dealing with a lot of inner emotions and experiences she had to be able to play off to really see where the action was taking us.

My beta readers cheered at the pace of the book and how it wrapped up. I entered it into the ACFW contest under Contemporary Women’s Fiction (I think–lol) and got two raving reviews! Then the third was a big crap-load. Though, the third judge did say she wanted to find out what happens. Which is positive… though why she would want to finish a book she rated under 50… I will never know. But we are moving past that…

So, right… My betas came back and loved it. One of whom is my Fantasy Friend, Debbie (*Waves* Miss ya!). She has read RINGS OF TIME and when we got together after she read RUNAWAY CHOICES she says, “Eisley, I couldn’t help but wonder what ROT would be like if you wrote it in first person…”

Of course, since it’s my baby I wanted to tell her she had grown a third head sometime during the night. But the more I thought about it… the more I wondered. And hey, what would it hurt?

In April 2010, I did rewrite RINGS OF TIME. Added a few scenes, took out a few scenes… and now it’s resting.

When I started DEGAN RISING (Middle Grade – Fantasy) I knew for certain it was going to be split POV in first person, cuzz it’s fun and has no limits.

However, my whole point of this post… about first person POV…

Most agents hate it.

Yup, you heard me right… hate hate hate it…

Why, oh why, would I write three (or four) novels in first person when agents hate it?

Because my audience loves it! All the children who have read DEGLAN RISING so far are thrilled with the story and come away with a big cheesy grin on their face… I wish I could have taken a picture of the last one. It’s priceless! This is why I write… This is why I will continue to write… This is why first person worked.

A ten year old said, “I felt like I was right there in the action and that I was the character…”

#Win/#win if you ask me!

So what do I do with this knowledge now….? Agents hate first person and audiences love it.

*shrug* I guess I just keep plugging away at the agent lists to find a first person lover of Middle Grade Fantasy… there has to be a couple out there… otherwise Percy Jackson wouldn’t have been published I just have to find them.

Oh and two children have asked me for the sequel to DEGLAN RISING.

#win/win/win/win!

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Yes…
Yes…
Awesome…
Hot…
Not yet…
and No.

But really my post today is about the dreaded query process when you write a novel.

Did you know it doesn’t take a break when you are on vacation? Well, I suppose you could take a break on vacation, but I haven’t. So today I sent out a few more queries… okay fifteen. I have my goals to meet here and I haven’t been sticking to my guns since the “No’s” have come in… My goal was to send at least two more queries each time I received a “No”… but since I was on vacation I hadn’t done it for lack of time to sit and research or whatever. That is my excuse anyway…

But now, since I have some down time… I counted the “No’s” that came in and sent some new queries out. Now we wait again… FUN! Indeed it’s fun in warped kinda way…

However, I thought you would be interested to see my statistics from my query process.

I started querying DEGLAN RISING on June 14th.

I sent out five… then six, seven and eight by June 15th.

Received my first response less then 24 hours later. And it was a FULL request. Wooot! However, DEGLAN RISING wasn’t for her. Drat!

Since that point… I have sent out a total of 62 (including those first eight) and received responses from 28 (well maybe more like 25… three of the agents are on twitter and said they were caught up and if you didn’t receive a response from them then it was a “Thanks, but no thanks.”) and no others have responded… yet.

The responses come in waves… seems like I receive one a day for 3-4 days then nothing for a week or more. Then again for a couple days.

I’m not surprised in the response times… Only when its like immediate. One agent shocked me with RINGS OF TIME way back when. It was a seven minute response time. Amazing.

Some of you will ask why on earth I have sent so many queries. Basically, querying is like trying on a pair of jeans… We all have junk to show off, we just have to find the right fit to help our junk shine. And you can quote me on that… It gives a whole new meaning to Junk in the Trunk

So ahem, are you getting your “Junk” out there to be viewed? There are enough agents out there willing to try your MS on for size… and if the fits it right… be ready to strut the catwalk… and show that “junk”.

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Dear Husband (DH) has to stay behind and work because he can’t take of 3-4 weeks at a time, but we will have fun anyway! And he will have the ultimate bachelor pad for a few weeks! Big screen HD Plasma television, surround sound, all the movies he can fathom… Yup, he won’t miss us.

I should be able to check in often enough from the road and at our various homesteads while there. So I won’t be a stranger to facebook, twitter or my blog. I will however will on a mission to find that “right” agent for DEGLAN RISING… yes, even on vacation work never ceases.

We leave Tuesday morning at 5:00am… and should arrive in SLC area 9 hours later… Our second day is 10 hours long with a stop off in Reno to hopefully see some friends.

My kids travel awesome, so I’m not dreading the trip at all. We have our MP3 players charged up and loaded with audio books (such a nerd family lol) and we will enjoy the drive together across the deserts of the west… I am sure a story or twelve will come out of it

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Beside the point… While I was out I came across this awesome van. See exhibit A.

You can’t tell in the picture but this was an awesome van. The dents in the side. The bumpers all mashed up… Heavy metal stickers all over the back and window. And the dude behind the wheel, didn’t look like he belonged there! At the stoplight… I see some small punctures in the gate at the back… is that… BULLET HOLES?!?!

*GASP*

Cue writers mind… and back story pondering. And more pondering… still more.

Enter Flash Fiction for today:

Colin ran his fingers down the length of the bumper, tracing the massive dent pressed into the rusted metal. The way that SUV had charged him, it’s a wonder how the bumper was still attached.

He laughed. A similar dent adorned the front bumper. Last month, he hadn’t taken into consideration the tab he might incur parking in a paid lot for seven days. He hadn’t brought any cash and he wasn’t about to give them his credit card to be pegged anywhere near that location. The arm on the security gate snapped in two when the rust colored 1988 Toyota Liteace he’d picked up back in Denver barreled through it.

He wasn’t an outlaw, quite the contrary. The law paid him… well at least that is what he told himself. The steel voice on the phone reassured him every time he got a new assignment that he worked for government. But he knew better, the less he knew, the better off he was.

Colin reached into his back pocket and pulled out a Metallica sticker. The last five he’d stuck to the back gate to cover bullet holes. This one was just because he liked even numbers. He stepped back and looked over the van. He didn’t know how long this piece of metal would hold out. He estimated with the damage done from the last confrontation that he might only have one more head to head before he would have to find another vehicle to destroy.

The cell phone on his hip roared to life, bringing his admiration for his stickers to a close.

“Yeah?” His deep surly voice echoed through the dry air.

The voice on the other side was cold and quick, “We need you in Vegas, tonight.”

“On my way,” he said and disconnected the line. He flipped the keys in his hand and grinned at the dent in the driver’s door. He needed one to match on the other side.

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Forget the crappy white pastey make-up of movie one…

Forget the crappy costumes and acting of movie two…

And just think movie three as –THEY GOT IT!

No spoilers…. but it was truly the better of the three and it won’t leave the book readers unhappy.

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A lot of people search the internet for inspiration, read books, talk to friends and desperately hope to pull around the wall that blocks the creativity. All good ways but sometimes it just doesn’t work.

Then what?

If you are struggling with a block, may I suggest something? Get a piece of paper… write down the main and supporting characters of your book. Then, randomly pick one and write a totally different shortish story about an event that happened in that characters life outside of your MAIN PLOT and book.

Sound dumb?

I would almost think that Stephanie Meyers book, “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner” was probably one of these exercises.

One that turned out to be another big seller for Stephanie… but she probably wrote it to get around a tough part that was giving her a “what for”…

So yes, I am serious… grab a minor character in your book and write something fun that probably won’t ever come to light about this character… and see where it takes you.

I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

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Or do I plot book two of DEGLAN RISING because it has series potential? Hmmm… Yes, that is what I think I will do. The thing is… this book is completely stand alone. I mean like, so much so if no one ever bought it everyone would be happily ever after… but the fact is, I left some strings danging just in case. Several of which can be tied in multiple books.

My 10yo Beta-Daughter-Reader tells me that I must write book two ASAP because of the last four lines of the book. She wants to see how this all “plays out”… which I can totally handle! Cuzz she is my audience. It’s how CS Lewis wrote… for his grandkids… I can write for my captive audience of three… Daughter-10, Son-9 and Son-7… I also have Niece-9 and Nephew-10 who are also there to add their fuel to the sequel fire.

So now I plot, or at least write down ideas for other books in the DEGLAN Series…

It will be so weird if this book sells before the other three… but oh well. Whatever the market wants… market gets.

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If you need me… I will be in the corner… dead.

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Okay… this one!

Did you read what it says… iPhone4 Giveaway… Coming soon. No flippen kidding!

The #Ethiopia2010 team is scraping their change together and buying a gift card for an iPhone4 ($399) and giving it away to one lucky person who donates to our team to help make our mission trip possible!

“What, Eisley? You mean all I have to do is donate to #Ethiopia2010?”

Yes, that is all you have to do. Each $10 donated to our team from now until the end of the giveaway (which is being determined by the higher-ups on the team) will put your name put into the drawing to receive the iphone4 gift card! If you donate $50 you get 10 entries into the drawing. If you donate $100 you get 30 entries into the drawing!

If you are a current AT&T customer and have already purchased an iphone4… no problem. Since it’s a gift card, you can use it on ANY apple product… so you can almost get an iPad… almost! It’s basically $400 in FREE apple cash! Which means those of you with Verizon or someone else can still cash in on the prize!

How do you donate? Well that’s the tricky part… and it’s not really that tricky! You can either use paypal or a check. All Checks written to the church are tax deductible and should be written exactly like the one to the left. Or you can write the check directly to the team member you are donating to.

There are a few of you who have already donated to #Ethiopia2010 and I believe you are entered into the drawing already! So no fear…!

No previously donated monies are being used to purchase this gift card. Each team member is paying a fraction of the cost to purchase this prize and we all feel it’s a good price to pay for this fundraiser!

If you have any question, feel free to ask

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Me? I see two seven year old boys attempting to create a level on Little Big Planet. I see the left over mess (on the table and their faces) of a birthday cake the same two little boys just made for the birthday party tonight. I see a house half cleaned (to be totaly clean by the party tonight). I see a garden that is still deciding if it wants to grow. I see endless potential in my children’s educational futures. I see my life. The life as I know it, that is exactly where I am rooted right now.

Now I am looking at the roots… they aren’t very deep, in fact they could be uprooted very easily. Humm…

Sometimes I look at these roots in this soil and wonder… Is it fertile enough? Am I getting enough water? Enough sun? Enough stimulation? Maybe I should move over there… cuzz the sun seems to hit on that patch a little brighter over there.

Still looking at the roots, wondering what do to about all the “What if…” “Should I…” “Maybe if…”

Have you thought this way before? Maybe you are feeling this way now? Maybe you are about to uproot yourself to find the brighter sun… Maybe you are ready to seek the shelter of shade because you have had too much sun… Maybe… Maybe…

Can I challenge your thinking for a moment. What if you embraced the soil you have been “planted” in at the moment and tried extra hard to bloom where you are planted? Look around you and find those nutrients to help you thrive in the soil you are in right now. This time in your life… there is a reason for it. It might be that we need to learn how to “survive” the storm and hail… Maybe it’s that we need to endure the scorching heat… and maybe it’s just a lesson on how to bloom and show others the beauty that you were created with.

Bloom! You can bloom despite your circumstances.

But Eisley, “You don’t know what kind of week I am going through! I am just ready to give up.” My challenge to that person is take that manure that you are experiencing and turn it into fertilizer. Know what I mean?

Bloom. It’s your challenge today, this week, this month. Just bloom.

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