Kimberly Pauley

Win an ARC of Still Sucks from Goodreads & other news…

Since my publisher was so nice as to send me a bunch more ARCs, I’m also doing a giveaway on Goodreads for 8 copies. So far 372 people have signed up for it which is cool! The giveaway ends on March 30th, so get your entry in if you’re a member of GoodReads!

In other news, looks like my Spanish publisher has also picked up Still Sucks to Be Me! I have no idea when it will be out, but it’ll be out in Spanish sometime! Woot!

Posted in Writing | No Comments »

Woot! New Site coming very, very soon!

Yay! My web designer person (who happens to be my lovely cousin, Doug) is back from vacation, so my new website is coming! That also means I won’t be posting for a day or two while we get stuff moved over. If you’re entering the Still Sucks to Be Me ARC contest, please both comment AND email me to make sure I get your entries. Hopefully everything will move over successfully, but it *is* technology and we know how that can go…so just to be on the safe side, be sure to email stuff too. In fact, it might even be best if you email me at kim@yabookscentral.com instead of my normal email address (kim@kimberlypauley.com) since my email will be moving too!

Keep your fingers crossed for me! And I hope you’ll like the new site!

Tags: new website!
Posted in Writing | 1 Comment »

Query Letters (The original Sucks to Be Me queries…)

So some people have asked me to post up my original query letter for Sucks to Be Me. It’s kind of interesting to see them now, honestly. I hadn’t read them in a while. I’m actually going to post up two different examples (each letter I sent out was a little different, depending on who I was sending it to). These are both from physical snail mail correspondence (I can’t get to my e-mail queries at the moment due to switching laptops).

Here’s one that was to an agent and was more or less a “cold call” — I didn’t know them, hadn’t met them, and didn’t have any personal connection to draw upon. If I did have a connection to draw upon (like being a recommendation from an author I knew, etc., I would have included it as the first paragraph.

Oh, and the title of the book originally (as you can see below), was This Bites. Lots of things have changed since then (total word count, Mina’s age, the number of pageviews YABC gets, you name it. This was back in 2005.)

——————————————————–

Dear [Agent Name]:

“So, I know what you’re going to say. ‘Mina, don’t be silly. Your parents don’t really want you dead.’ But, see, that’s where you’re wrong. Dead wrong. My parents are vampires and now…now, I have to figure out if I want to be a bloodsucker too and continue the family tradition. So don’t tell me you’ve got issues. I’ve got issues.”

Right before her eighteenth birthday, Mina is given an unexpected decision: to suck or not to suck? What to do when you’ve got bigger things to worry about, like finding true love (or at least ‘true like’), finding a date for Prom, and finding yourself? Complicated by required vampire lessons (Geez, vampire homework? What next?) and field trips, love triangles (or is that squares?), and a sardonic but lovable uncle, Mina manages to find some meaning in it all and work out for herself what’s right for her, fangs or no fangs.

This Bites is a completed 57,000 word young adult novel targeted towards readers of Meg Cabot, Daniel Ehrenhaft (his comments so far on my novel, after reading the first few chapters: “You have something really cool here!”), and Sarah Mlynowski. Told in the first person, the tone is light, sarcastic, and comic (similar to the snarkiness of Lulu Dark) — this is no blood and guts vampire novel. Two additional books in the series are planned: This Bites: France Sucks (Mina visits France as a Student Vampire Ambassador, despite the fact she can’t speak French) and This Bites: Vampire U (Mina goes to Vampire college).

You might know me best as my alter-ego, the Young Adult Books Goddess from Young Adult Books Central (www.yabookscentral.com), one of the leading YA lit sites on the Internet with over 160,000 pageviews a month. I have been a reviewer of YA books since 1998 and I specialized in children’s and adolescent literature in college. I regularly work with authors, publishers, and publicists in the genre and consider myself a well-read, if exhausted, individual (I receive approximately 200 – 300 books to review a year).

Per your guidelines, I have enclosed the first 10 pages of my manuscript and an SASE. I look forward to hearing from you. I can be reached via e-mail at kim@yabookscentral.com or via telephone at (xxx) xxx-xxxx.

Tags: example query letters, Writing
Posted in Writing | 11 Comments »

What's best to start with… a single novel, short stories, or a series?

I got this question posted to my Challenge:

One question I had was when trying to get published what is the best approach, take one finished novel in or make a bunch of short stories or both? Or perhaps an entire book series would be best?

I thought I’d answer it here as the answer’d be kind of long for a comment thread.

First off, let me once again say that this is just my own opinion. And we all know that saying about opinions…at any rate, if you troll around on the web, you’re sure to find more opinions on this.

Personally, based on my own experiences and from what I’ve gleaned from agents and editors, it’s best for first timers to start out with a completed (polished as much as possible) manuscript that stands on its own, even if it is part of a projected series.

Why? Well, as a first timer, they have no idea whether or not your book is going to sell. So they don’t necessarily want to commit to an entire series. I’ve even heard that you shouldn’t even mention that your book is the first in a series, even if it is is, in your query. I totally broke that rule in mine, though I kept the mention brief and stressed that the book stood alone (if anyone wants me to post my query up, just ask). When my publisher did decide to take a chance on me, they included an option in the contract for follow up books, but bought the book as a standalone. I understand that is pretty common (though we’ve all heard about the exceptions).

So, what about short stories? I’ve definitely heard of a lot of people breaking in through the short story market and it is an excellent way to hone your skills (good short stories are TOUGH). But…the short story market is shrinking all the time. Magazines and websites close up every day it seems (iz sad) and the pay for short stories is really, really tiny. I’ve made as little as $10 on a short story before (and yes, that was in a print magazine). Anthologies of short stories don’t tend to sell that well (from what I understand) unless there are some big name headliners on it. So, in short, not an easy way to break in.

Personally, I’ve also found that the time spent on short stories and marketing them is better spent for me on a longer book. But your mileage may vary.

So…next I probably ought to blog about my thoughts on what’s best to follow up with, eh? I’m working on that now.

Tags: business, first time novelist, how to break in, Writing
Posted in Writing | 8 Comments »

And now for something different…how I got an agent

I’ve been promising to write this post for some time, though I’d like to start off with a disclaimer: This information will in no way help you at all.

There. Now that we’ve got that out of the way.

Before you get an agent, you look on with wide-eyed wonder at those writers who have one wondering who waved a magic wand. Or maybe just in bitter jealousy. I suppose it depends on you.

Anyway, here’s how I got one (Tamar Rydzinski of the Laura Dail agency). First, I wrote a book. (Doh!) Then I started querying agents that I’d researched as possible good fits based on what they repped and on recommendations from author peeps that I knew (I knew quite a few from all my years of reviewing and interviewing them). I queried a total of about, erm, maybe 8 or 10 agents in my first batch, including Laura Dail, who had been recommended (and introduced to me) by the awesome Sarah Mlynowski.

They all said no. For the most part, they all liked my writing okay but to some it didn’t speak to them because they liked vampire novels that were traditional horror-ish stuff. And some just didn’t think vampires were an easy sell. I should note that I wrote my book in 2004/2005 before Twilight came out and was querying before it came out and during the early Twilight days before things went insane. And, darn it all, right when I first started querying, a bunch of new vampire books cropped up. Laura considered it the longest and gave me an encouraging no and said I should send more stuff in the future.

Well, I was talking with Terry, a writer friend of mine and she mentioned that her editor at Mirrorstone was looking for paranormal YA. She introduced me and Mirrorstone considered the manuscript for a good long time (not complaining, just saying). They ultimately decided to buy it and I signed all the contracts and stuff myself. No agent.

Then (much later), my book came out. An author friend of mine who had gone to work as an editor/development dude at a large book packager (okay, THE large book packager) liked Mina’s voice. He emailed and asked if I would be interested in working with them on a middle grade novel, possibly a series. It was an interesting idea and while it wasn’t *my* idea, I thought I ought to at least investigate it. But there was no way I was going to do that without an agent. Book packaging contracts are notoriously convoluted. So I emailed Laura and explained the situation, etc. and they agreed to represent me.

The book packager thing fell through (they decided they wanted a guy to write the series in question, and while there are many things I can change about myself, that just isn’t one of them), but lo and behold, I had an agent. Tamar works with Laura.

Nothing overly romantic or earth-shattering, but there you go.

I still actually have no idea how the agent thing works in many ways since Tamar hasn’t actually repped a book I haven’t sold myself (she did the contract stuff on the sequel, but didn’t have to present it or anything like that — I really still just worked directly with my editor on that). They’ve handled all the foreign contract stuff on Sucks to Be Me, which is good (because it is totally confusing). So I’ll have to report back after I actually finish my next book and actually get to work with them for real.

See, I told you it wouldn’t help you at all.

Tags: how I got an agent
Posted in Personal, Posts that are entirely too long, Writing | 5 Comments »

On Picture Books & Other Randomness

I’m in a little bit of a funk. The Max lost his elephant yesterday and try as I might, we just couldn’t track him down (we got as far as learning a maintenance guy at the mall had picked him up, but that was a dead end). And my hubby is off again jet setting around the world (London, this week—Boston, last). It’s the time of year when I feel like I’ve got a million things to do (and I do), but no desire to really do anything other than sip hot cocoa and eggnog (not at the same time) and sit by the fire.

Neither of which I am actually doing. But I’d really like to.

Writing-wise, I’ve been slowly working on my new novel (the as-yet unsold one, but at least my agent is liking it so far) but I need to do some more character construction for one of the main character’s best friends. She’s a little too flat and typical right now. So I’m hoping to get that settled so I can move on with the book.

And I did send off a picture book manuscript to two different editors. My agent doesn’t handle picture books, so I’m doing the legwork on this one on my own. As Michael Stearns says, picture books are HARD. I know a lot of people think “Oh, but they’re so short and cute! I could turn one out tomorrow!” But they are wrong. Dead wrong (and no, that’s not a vampire joke). Actually, I directly hear this from people all the time. Pretty much anytime I tell someone what I do for a living. The next thing out of their mouth is usually “Oh, I’m going to write a picture book” or “I wrote a picture book” or some variation thereof. Like it’s nothing.

Humph. Picture books are harder than novels in many ways. You have so few words to work with. I revised that one little picture book (of around 100 words) far more times than any scene in any book I’ve worked on. And I’m afraid it still isn’t perfect. I can think of at least two other ways to do it, but I finally picked one and sent it off because you have to start somewhere.

I have a lot of respect for good picture book authors. They do a lot with so little. I hope that I’ll get a nibble on my little picture book and it will have a chance to shine as well. Only time will tell.

Now, my poetry, on the other hand…that I only do for fun anymore. I have had a few published in magazines, but I don’t even send them out anymore. They are an indulgence and my new poetry rule for myself is that they are unedited. Because I could spend GOBS of time on them. But I don’t want to. I’m a mediocre poet with occasional stanzas of awesomeness. It’s not my career or my calling. But it’s fun. So I just write them and don’t worry about them and just post ‘em on my personal blog (if you *really* want to read one, you can: Watch Out, He Might Blow is a good example of my brain dump poetry.)

But I should wrap this up with an actual point, shouldn’t I? Okay, how about this: ALL writing is hard. And it should be. It’s work. Work is something you work at. There are no shortcuts.

That’s not to say it isn’t the most fun you can have without chocolate.

Tags: picture books, poetry
Posted in Posts that are entirely too long, Writing | 1 Comment »

New Author Photos

So we had a photo shoot last weekend and I got some of the pictures back today. At some point I’ll have a page on the website so that these can be easily grabbed if you need them for some reason, but for now I thought I’d just stick them up to share. They were taken by Souder Photography

Tags: author photos, kimberly pauley
Posted in Writing | 7 Comments »

Where I Write

So, this is where I do most of my writing, in my office. If you click on the pic, it’ll show you a blown up version (if you are so inclined). One side is three bookshelves (full o’ books) and the other side is a desk with bookshelves on top. The painting on the wall is my own (I call it Angry Dude). The giant frog was a gift from my team when I left corporate life. There’s a kind of matching dragon and fish on top of the bookshelves that you can’t see. Under the Angry Dude is a card designed by Emi Tanji that my publisher sent me when The Max was born. It is ADORABLE. Aw, heck, here it is in all it’s glory:

On the shelves closest to where I work are my writing and reference books, including Writing Magic, Writing Down the Bones, On Writing, The Encyclopedia of Fairies, Critical Theory Since Plato, and many, many more. It’s kind of a random collection. There’s also a great deal of medieval reference books that I’d bought when I was working on an epic fantasy. I still might finish it someday. We’ll see. The heroine was a young girl who could kick butt AND was a heckuva blacksmith. And a young king who’d much rather study than wield a sword.

I also like to write on the front porch with my laptop if the weather was good (which up here in Chicago? Eh, there’s only about 5 months out of the year that’ll work). I used to write in coffee shops, doing the whole writer-y thing, but that was before The Max. Now, I write whenever and wherever I can, sometimes in the middle of the night when everyone else is sleeping. So imagine me in there typing away in the dark with my giant frog flying up above.

By the way, my office? Almost never that clean.

Posted in Just for Fun, Personal, Writing | 4 Comments »

The Prairie Writer's Day Conference & Other Random Thoughts

So, I went to the SCBWI Illinois Prairie Writer’s Day Conference this Saturday. It was a strange experience for me. I haven’t been to a conference since we lived in Florida (I used to go to the Florida Suncoast Conference every year) — and, more importantly, since I got published. It feels entirely different now. Of course, there’s also the difference in conferences; the Suncoast one is much larger and for writers of…well, everything…while the SCBWI ones are (naturally) for those that deal in YA, kiddie lit, and illustration.

I still remember very fondly the year I got to have dinner with Harry Harrison. That was one of the highlights of my life. Should I say that? Oh, I am such a sci-fi geekette. Anyway, back to today.

It was a good conference but, as most such things are, it’s really geared more towards the pre-published than the published. I can’t say that I learned a whole lot. But then, I’ve also been “around” the business for quite some time what with running YA Books Central all these years. And other stuff. Eh, did I ever tell you I interned as an editorial assistant at a University Press? Oh my, the slush pile. It was, eh, academic. But weird.

But I digress (like I normally do).

Not that I am by any means an expert at anything in this crazy writing business. I may be published (and come May I’ll be more than a one hit wonder–Yay!), but I still have lots of questions. But they aren’t really the questions that get answered at conferences unless you can have a wee bit of a chat with an editor or agent (but not a stalkerish one). Though technically I suppose I can chat with my own  editor or agent. And I do. But sometimes, it’s hard to get solid answers. And I have to sometimes wonder if they’re just being nice (because they are, you know. Nice. Really. Awesome people.).

Like I’ll ask, “Um, so how is my book doing? Is it doing okay? How many copies should I be selling? How many copies do debut authors tend to sell on average?”

The answer I’ve gotten to that question is basically “Hey, it’s doing just fine.” and “It’s hard to give an average. I really couldn’t say.”

Maybe it’s because my husband is a math dude that I get a little caught up in numbers. Or maybe because he’s always asking me. When I get my royalty statements I can tell him how many copies I’ve sold, but I’ve never really been able to say whether it’s a good number or not. Because I really don’t know and it’s not the kind of stuff you can find anywhere online and they don’t teach it at conferences (though if someone did a breakout session on that? Oh, I would totally take it). And you can’t compare to news reports because they only seem to report on the big guns.

And I am NOT J.K. Rowling or Stephenie Meyer. I am not selling millions of copies. Not that I would complain if I was. So, you know, if you feel like going out there and buying a copy or two or three…

Um, anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. The conference.

One of the little tidbits I happened to learn today was during a session with Michael Stearns of Upstart Crow Literary. He’s an agent that I’ve followed on Twitter awhile and kept up with his blog posts (he’s pretty funny and if you know me, you know I like funny). He used to be an editor with a couple of different (very large) publishing houses. He said that [fairly popular author who I've heard of and admire greatly]’s first 4 or so books sold only a few thousand copies each. And even his [really great, very awesome] award-winning novel only sold like 6,000 copies in hardcover.

Whoa.

Really?? I mean, I’d seen a news article recently that said something about how a first book nowadays is considered a success if it sells 5,000 copies. I thought it was a typo. Seriously.

Sucks to Be Me (in hardcover) has sold a bunch more than that. Not like Rowling level bunches or anything (not even close), but way more than that! And the paperback version that came out in August? It’s already sold more than that (though I think the numbers he was quoting were all about the hardcover, so I don’t know how the paperback sales stack up). And the hardcover did even go into a second printing, pretty fast.

So I do feel like, hey, maybe my book is doing pretty good! And who knows what will happen once the sequel comes out in May? Maybe even more people will discover it.

Hmmm. Betcha didn’t realize that even published authors still stress about stuff, huh? It makes me smile every time a fan writes me (and I write back) and they go “OMG! A Famous Author wrote me back!” Because I sooooooo do not feel remotely famous. If I’m ever out and about and I actually see someone reading my book (someone I don’t already know), I will probably SQUEE out loud and faint dead away.

Hmm. Maybe it’s a good thing I’m NOT J.K. Rowling. I’d have to carry a pillow around to land on or something.

But I should get back to talking about the conference. It was pretty good. Besides Michael Stearns, the other keynote speakers were Cynthia Leitich Smith (it was incredibly awesome to FINALLY meet her in person after having “known” her for years via email and she also brought along her husband Greg, who writes middle grade novels that I also love, so that was a bonus), Stacy Cantor from Walker Books, Yolanda LeRoy from Charlesbridge, Alisha Niehaus from Dial Books (Penguin), and Nick Eliopulos from Random House. They were all great, though Nick was especially funny — PLUS he also went to the University of Florida AND he also played D&D in High School! And he’s on the shorter side (though not nearly so short as me). I’d love to work with him someday. I think he’d be fun. I would totally write a paranormal gay romance just to do it.

Okay, I’m sure that made no sense to you. Ha! Nick had filled out a questionnaire about what he’d love to see come across his desk and that’s what he put down, even though he was kind of joking. But only kinda.

Though the novel I’m working on now is paranormal and it does have some romance and it does have a gay character…hmmmm. Though the gay character is a best friend and not the main character, so not a 100% fit. Anyway. But who knows, maybe my agent can send it to him when I’m done. You never know.

I thought all of the editors that came were very interesting and knew their stuff. And they were entertaining…Yolanda even sang and danced for us and Alisha turned a cartwheel.

Um, maybe you had to be there.

I also took in a breakout session with Cynthea Liu, the author of Paris Pan Takes the Dare. It was on PR. I actually pretty much already do all the things she talked about (which, geez, hopefully so since my first book came out in 2008!), though the one thing I ought to be more proactive about is scheduling events and trying to book school visits. I just haven’t put that as a big priority, partly because of The Max. But Cynthea’s got a 2 year old and if she can do it…Though, really, I think it’s tough right now because most schools and libraries just don’t have the funding to book authors. And I can’t afford to do visits for free (heck, childcare for The Max is around $100 if I’m gone all day) except when I do it as a promotion/giveaway. *sigh* Darn economy. But who knows, maybe next year will be better.

The only cringe worthy moments for me were when anybody brought up vampire novels during the talks. And how they were so over and blah, blah, blah. *sigh* Every time someone at one of these things asks me what my book is about, I kind of hate telling them it’s a vampire book. But it’s different! I say, while their eyes glaze over. I feel like I need to get a T-shirt written up with a disclaimer: Yes, I wrote a vampire book. No, I didn’t write it because of Twilight. I wrote it before Twilight came out, thankyouverymuch. There was a bandwagon? Wow, I must have missed that. Really, the undead are sooo dead? Thank you for telling me. I hadn’t heard that. Yes, I do have fangs. Do you want to see them? No, the book I’m working on now doesn’t have any vampires in it. No, it doesn’t have werewolves in it either. No, there are no zombies. No angels either. Would you like a bookmark?

Okay, maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea.

Um…this is getting really long and it’s past my bedtime. And it’s not even a rant. So, to sum up (as Inigo says)…

The conference was interesting. The guests were informative. I still feel all “Whoa, I’m an actual author.” And free Snickers? Those are always yummy.

Tags: alisha niehaus, kimberly pauley, michael stearns, nick eliopulos, prairie writer's day, scbwi illinois, stacy cantor, yolanda leroy
Posted in Author Appearances, Personal, Posts that are entirely too long, Writing | 5 Comments »

Ser Yo Es Un Asco! Books are here!

Woot! I got a nice surprise in the mail today! My 5 author copies (plus some bookmarks) of the Spanish version of Sucks to Be Me (Ser yo es un asco)!! Here they are:

Ser yo es un asco !

Now, I only get 5 copies. But I’ve gotta give at least a couple of these away, right? Help me think of a good giveaway…post your ideas here.

Tags: ser yo es un asco, sucks to be me
Posted in Writing | 2 Comments »