Well, I guess joining the writers group did not make me post more, maybe I'll set a calendar event or something. The Group is nice however, the mediator (we have one of those) is a research librarian who generates the writing prompts and lends her experience to the commentary on the group pieces.
Before the last meeting I contacted her (let's call her Miss Librarian), and asked a favor. I wanted to present the book that I had finished to the group and ask for their response. Miss Librarian said she would love to do that, and I received many affirmatives from the group for their willingness to read said story.
I realized when I read the hook for the story that not only was the hook inaccurate but it was actually bad and sappy. So, I have been working on creating a new hook. I have a few that I've been mulling over and I think I have a couple that may be winners. Here they are:
Amnesia,
slavery, attempted rape, murder, deceit, backstabbing, missing
organs, deadly secrets, Monsters, microscopic robots, decapitation,
dismemberment, blood and incredible super powers. And that's just in
the first two weeks after I woke up in a dark cave wearing nothing
but a hospital smock.
A
powerful and well respected company, a prevalent technology, and an
unspeakable and deadly secret. These forces revolve around a
seemingly ordinary young woman who has no useful memories to speak
of, no clues to her identity. Yet she must unravel these mysteries
and the only things she has are a strange tattoo, a piece of paper
and a hospital smock.
I'm partial to the first hook, but its first person, not the POV of the book . The second one is OK, but it feels formulaic. Maybe POV won't matter in the hook, we'll see. I also worked on "The Pitch". This is the one sentence that is supposed to summarize the entire novel, entice the imagination and encompass what makes the book stand out. This is nigh on impossible. Imagine condensing "Harry Potter" to one sentence, and making it good enough that everyone wants to read it. Daunting. But here is my go for "The Book":
How
do you find your friends when you can't even remember who your
enemies are?
Not bad, it's compact, to the point, pertains to the story and gives just enough hint to make you ask questions. Who are your friends? Why do you have enemies? And why don't you remember who they are? Hmm, on second thought, that's not that bad. I think I'll keep it.
I'd really like to post an excerpt from "The Book" here but that would be silly if I ever want to sell it. Maybe if no one touches it, I'll post the first few chapters and list it on Amazon myself, but until then, here is another tid-bit of mine from the writers group:
“YAAAAAA!”
CRASH! Damn, that
hurt! I nurse the top of my head and try to stand as the contents of
a curio cabinet rain down around me, small figurines and plates
shattering on the floor. I lurch to my feet and stumble over to the
computer. Typing in a few quick commands, I shut down the cleaning
field. I hit the enter key to issue the last command and the painting
I was cleaning, Van Gogh's Starry Night, shudders slightly and
topples gently forward off the easel.
Fear stabs my heart
and I dive forward, sustaining another blow to the head and a sprain
to my wrist as I crash into the wall. It's all for naught though as I
miss the painting by several inches and it crashes to the floor.
Heart pounding, I crawl over to the Van Gogh and gently lift it off
the floor. Luckily, it's still intact, no damage was done to the
canvas. The frame has only a few new blemishes, and since it was
“distressed” to look old I figure a few more dings won't be
noticed. Sighing with relief, I lay the painting face down on the
floor and lean back against the wall, recovering for a few minutes
from my ordeal.
You'd think that
after having done this a few dozen times, I would have mastered the
re-entry. In my defense I was being chased when I jumped back through
the portal, so a certain amount of disarray was to be expected. I've
had a few close calls since I discovered what I could do, but none
like that. It started some years ago when I invented a new method for
cleaning paintings using buckyballs and encapsulated quantum
singularities. I found that if I captured the painting digitally on
my computer, sprayed the microscopic balls on a painting, and exposed
them to a computer modulated EM field, the singularities inside the
buckyballs would remove the grunge from the paintings, no mess, no
precautions, no damage. I first noticed something was weird when I
was cleaning a painting for the Boston MFA and tripped holding a cup
of coffee I had just poured for myself. I fell head first and slammed
into the floor, coffee flying. I looked up just in time to see the
cup disappear into the Monet I was cleaning. Intrigued, I put on a
pair of Nitrile gloves and gingerly reached out for the painting.
Imagine my shock when I didn't
touch the painting! My hand went right through the canvas!
Ever
since then I've been experimenting and taking trips into the larger
paintings. This last one, though, was almost enough to make me
re-consider my adventures, or at least make me swear off Van Gogh. Sure, those adventures were wonderful fodder for my blossoming
writing career. Of course, I had to publish under a pseudonym. It was
the only way I could continue cleaning paintings and get fresh
material. It meant that I had to stay anonymous, but hey, I was
willing to trade off fame for fortune.
Shaking
out of my reverie, I glance down at the painting, glad that I managed
to shut off the cleaning field in time. If that thing had
followed me back.... The problem with paint jumping was that the
worlds the paintings led to were complete un-knowns, brought into
being by the artists imagination. At least that's what I thought at
first. The truth was these artists were actually quasi-psychics, able
to see through time and dimension. At least that's what I've come to
understand from my limited research. That stuff about making
political, social or economic statements? Total crap. And don't get
me started on Escher or Dali! It's amazing those guys never went
insane! Well, maybe Dali, just a little.
At
least now I have an inkling why Van Gogh was such a tortured artist.
The worlds he saw? Well let's say they make Picasso's look like
Sesame Street. The one I just came from, Starry Night, was a hellish
world. Humans kept in villages, used for food and bio-electricity,
Matrix-esque, by the most intelligently evil creatures ever to grace
the dimensional continuum. That big black thing in the foreground?
That's actually one of the beasts, a giant mass of tentacles and
venom that strangles its paralyzed victims for pleasure. That
was what I was fleeing from. I was just glad I escaped with all my
appendages in tact. Turing off the portal would have been difficult
without two hands.
RATTLE!!
I cease all movement as a wave of cold grips my heart. Please. Please
no! I tilt my head slowly down and stare at the upside down painting.
It rattles again and shivers on the floor. Dear God. They're figuring
out how to open it from the other side! This is so not good.
